Investigation of dipole strength up to the neutron separation energy at γELBE

The bremsstrahlung facility at the ELBE accelerator offers the possibility to investigate dipole strength distributions up to the neutron-separation energies with photon up to 16 MeV in energy. The facility and various results for nuclides measured during recent years are presented. One example is the study of the N = 80 nuclide 136 Ba. The other presented example is the study of the chain of xenon isotopes from N = 70 to N = 80 which aimed to investigate the influence of nuclear deformation an neutron excess on the dipole strength in the pygmy region. An overview of the analysis is given. GEANT4 simulations were performed to determine the non-nuclear background that has to be removed from the measured spectra. This opens up the possibility to take into account also the strength of unresolved transitions. Simulations of gamma-ray cascades were carried out that consider the transitions from states in the quasi-continuum and allow us to estimate their branching ratios. As a result, the photoabsorption cross sections obtained from corrected intensities of ground-state transitions are compared with theoretical predictions and results within the chain of isotopes. With the help of the measured dipole distribution it is possible to describe gamma-ray spectra following neutron capture more precisely.