Time-of-flight discrimination between gamma-rays and neutrons by neural networks

In gamma-ray spectroscopy, a number of neutrons are emitted from the nuclei together with the gamma-rays and these neutrons influence gamma-ray spectra. An obvious method of separating between neutrons and gamma-rays is based on the time-of-flight (tof) technique. This work aims obtaining tof distributions of gamma-rays and neutrons by using feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN). It was shown that, ANN can correctly classify gamma-ray and neutron events. Testing of trained networks on experimental data clearly shows up tof discrimination of gamma-rays and neutrons.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure

Advanced characterization and simulation of SONNE: a fast neutron spectrometer for Solar Probe Plus

SONNE, the SOlar NeutroN Experiment proposed for Solar Probe Plus, is designed to measure solar neutrons from 1-20 MeV and solar gammas from 0.5-10 MeV. SONNE is a double scatter instrument that employs imaging to maximize its signal-to-noise ratio by rejecting neutral particles from non-solar directions. Under the assumption of quiescent or episodic small-flare activity, one can constrain the energy content and power dissipation by fast ions in the low corona. Although the spectrum of protons and ions produced by nanoflaring activity is unknown, we estimate the signal in neutrons and γ−rays that would be present within thirty solar radii, constrained by earlier measurements at 1 AU. Laboratory results and simulations will be presented illustrating the instrument sensitivity and resolving power

Dataset for neutron and gamma-ray pulse shape discrimination

The publicly accessible dataset includes neutron and gamma-ray pulse signals for conducting pulse shape discrimination experiments. Several traditional and recently proposed pulse shape discrimination algorithms are utilized to evaluate the performance of pulse shape discrimination under raw pulse signals and noise-enhanced datasets. These algorithms comprise zero-crossing (ZC), charge comparison (CC), falling edge percentage slope (FEPS), frequency gradient analysis (FGA), pulse-coupled neural network (PCNN), ladder gradient (LG), and het-erogeneous quasi-continuous spiking cortical model (HQC-SCM). In addition to the pulse signals, this dataset includes the source code for all the aforementioned pulse shape discrimination methods. Moreover, the dataset provides the source code for schematic pulse shape discrimination performance evaluation and anti-noise performance evaluation. This feature enables researchers to evaluate the performance of these methods using standard procedures and assess their anti-noise ability under various noise conditions. In conclusion, this dataset offers a comprehensive set of resources for conducting pulse shape discrimination experiments and evaluating the performance of various pulse shape discrimination methods under different noise scenarios.Comment: 11 pages,10 figure

European Reference Network for Critical Infrastructure Protection: - Novel Detection Technologies for Nuclear Security

Radiation detectors are used in nuclear security to detect nuclear and other radioactive materials out of regulatory control. In nuclear security, both the operational environment and detector technologies are constantly evolving. This document provides an overview on recent development on radiation detection technologies that are likely to have an impact on nuclear security in the near future. The four main topics covered are: detectors for gamma-ray spectrometry, neutron detectors, data acquisition and source localisation. This document will be published together with another report that concentrates on the impact of novel detection technologies from operational point of view. Therefore, the focus of this document is on technical aspects of the technologies.JRC.E.2-Technology Innovation in Securit

Front End Electronics for Neutron- Gamma Spectrometer Device

abstract: With the natural resources of earth depleting very fast, the natural resources of other celestial bodies are considered a potential replacement. Thus, there has been rise of space missions constantly and with it the need of more sophisticated spectrometer devices has increased. The most important requirement in such an application is low area and power consumption. To save area, some scintillators have been developed that can resolve both neutrons and gamma events rather than traditional scintillators which can do only one of these and thus, the spacecraft needs two such devices. But with this development, the requirements out of the readout electronics has also increased which now need to discriminate between neutron and gamma events. This work presents a novel architecture for discriminating such events and compares the results with another approach developed by a partner company. The results show excellent potential in this approach for the neutron-gamma discrimination and the team at ASU is going to expand on this design and build up a working prototype for the complete spectrometer device.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Engineering 201

Simulations of events for the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter experiment

The LUX-ZEPLIN dark matter search aims to achieve a sensitivity to the WIMP-nucleon spin-independent cross-section down to (1–2)×10−12 pb at a WIMP mass of 40 GeV/c2. This paper describes the simulations framework that, along with radioactivity measurements, was used to support this projection, and also to provide mock data for validating reconstruction and analysis software. Of particular note are the event generators, which allow us to model the background radiation, and the detector response physics used in the production of raw signals, which can be converted into digitized waveforms similar to data from the operational detector. Inclusion of the detector response allows us to process simulated data using the same analysis routines as developed to process the experimental data