Estimated ⁵⁵Mn and ⁹⁰Zr Cross Section Covariances in the Fast Neutron Energy Region

We completed estimates of neutron cross section covariances for ⁵⁵Mn and ⁹⁰Zr, from the keV energy range to 25 MeV, considering the most important reaction channels, total, elastic, inelastic, capture, and (n,2n). The nuclear reaction model code EMPIRE was used to calculate sensitivity to model parameters by a perturbation of parameters that define the optical model potential, nuclear level densities and strength of the pre-equilibrium emission. The sensitivity analysis was performed with the set of parameters which reproduces the ENDF/B-VII.0 cross sections. The experimental data were analyzed and both statistical and systematic uncertainties were extracted from almost 30 selected experiments. Then, the Bayesian code KALMAN was used to combine the sensitivity analysis and the experiments to obtain the evaluated covariance matrices.