Coulomb dissociation of ¹⁵C and radiative neutron capture on ¹⁴C

The semiclassical, dynamical description of diffraction dissociation of weakly bound nuclei is applied to analyze the decay-energy spectra of ¹⁵C that have been measured at 68 MeV/nucleon on a Pb target. The optical potentials that are used to describe the nuclear interaction of ¹⁵C with the target nucleus are realistic because the fits to the two measured spectra, one with a small and one with a very large acceptance angle, are consistent and of similar quality. The cross section for the radiative neutron capture on ¹⁴C to the 1/2⁺ ground state of ¹⁵C is deduced from the analysis. When combined with an estimated contribution from the capture to the 5/2⁺ excited state of ¹⁵C, an excellent agreement with a recent direct capture measurement is achieved.