Overview and evaluation of different nuclear level density models for the ¹²³I radionuclide production

The ¹²³I radionuclide (T_1/2 = 13.22 h, β+ = 100%) is one of the most potent gamma emitters for nuclear medicine. In this study, the cyclotron production of this radionuclide via different nuclear reactions namely, the ¹²¹Sb(α,2n), ¹²²Te(d,n), ¹²³Te(p,n), ¹²⁴Te(p,2n), ¹²⁴Xe(p,2n), ¹²⁷I(p,5n) and ¹²⁷I(d,6n) were investigated. The effect of the various phenomenological nuclear level density models such as Fermi gas model (FGM), Back-shifted Fermi gas model (BSFGM), Generalized superfluid model (GSM) and Enhanced generalized superfluid model (EGSM) moreover, the three microscopic level density models were evaluated for predicting of cross sections and production yield predictions. The SRIM code was used to obtain the target thickness. The ¹²³I excitation function of reactions were calculated by using of the TALYS-1.8, EMPIRE-3.2 nuclear codes and with data which taken from TENDL-2015 database, and finally the theoretical calculations were compared with reported experimental measurements in which taken from EXFOR database.