Activation cross sections of proton induced nuclear reactions on gold up to 65 MeV

•Proton induced reactions on gold up to 65 MeV.•Stacked foil irradiation.•Comparison of experimental results with the TENDL libraries and with EMPIRE 3.2 results.•Calculation and comparison of thick target integral yields.•Applications for medicine, industry and beam monitoring.

Activation cross sections of proton induced reactions on gold for production of 197m,197g,195m,195g, 193m,193g,192Hg, 196m,196g(cum),195g(cum),194,191(cum)Au, 191(cum)Pt and 192Ir were measured up to 65 MeV proton energy, some of them for the first time. The new data are in acceptably good agreement with the recently published earlier experimental data in the overlapping energy region. The experimental data are compared with the predictions of the TALYS 1.6 (results in TENDL-2015 on-line library) and EMPIRE 3.2 code.