Nuclear Physics for Cultural Heritage

Nuclear physics applications in medicine and energy are well known and widely reported. Less well known are the many important nuclear and related techniques used for the study, characterization, assessment and preservation of cultural heritage. There has been enormous progress in this field in recent years and the current review aims to provide the public with a popular and accessible account of this work. The Nuclear Physics Division of the EPS represents scientists from all branches of nuclear physics across Europe. One of its aims is the dissemination of knowledge about nuclear physics and its applications. This review is led by Division board member Anna Macková, Head of the Tandetron Laboratory at the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and the review committee includes four other members of the nuclear physics board interested in this area: Faiçal Azaiez, Johan Nyberg, Eli Piasetzky and Douglas MacGregor. To create a truly authoritative account, the Scientific Editors have invited contributions from leading experts across Europe, and this publication is the combined result of their work. The review is extensively illustrated with important discoveries and examples from archaeology, pre-history, history, geography, culture, religion and curation, which underline the breadth and importance of this field. The large number of groups and laboratories working in the study and preservation of cultural heritage across Europe indicate the enormous effort and importance attached by society to this activity

Design, calibration and tests of an extended-range Bonner sphere spectrometer

Stray radiation fields outside the shielding of hadron accelerators are of complex nature. They consist of a multiplicity of radiation components (neutrons, photons, electrons, pions, muons, ...) which extend over a wide range of energies. Since the dose equivalent in these mixed fields is mainly due to neutrons, neutron dosimetry is a particularly important task. The neutron energy in these fields ranges from thermal up to several hundreds of MeV, thus making dosimetry difficult. A well known instrument for measuring neutron energy distributions from thermal energies up to about E=10 MeV is the Bonner sphere spectrometer (BSS). It consists of a set of moderating spheres of different radii made of polyethylene, with a thermal neutron counter in the centre. Each detector (sphere plus counter) has a maximum response at a certain energy value depending on its size, but the overall response of the conventional BSS drops sharply between E=10-20 MeV. This thesis focuses on the development, the calibration and tests in various radiation fields of a new Bonner sphere spectrometer with an extended response function. First, two new Bonner spheres with a response up to E=2 GeV were developed and built as a complement to a conventional BSS. This was achieved by an extensive Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation study performed with FLUKA on possible moderating materials and combinations of these materials. In this study particular care was taken to reliably estimate the uncertainties on the calculated response functions due to variations of the sphere diameter, the moderator density and the moderator thickness. MC simulations also pointed out that the old sphere supports made of plastics increase the neutron scattering and may therefore influence the count rate of the Bonner spheres. Thus, new sphere supports made of aluminium were designed and constructed. The two new spheres were assembled with the conventional BSS into a new extended-range spectrometer. The new spectrometer was then calibrated at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Germany, using monoenergetic neutron beams of E=144 keV, 1.2 MeV, 5 MeV and 14.8 MeV. In the following it was also tested with an 241Am-Be source in the CERN calibration laboratory and at CERF (CERN-EU high-energy reference field). The CERF facility is very well characterized and provides a broad neutron field from thermal energies up to several hundreds of MeV with a large relative contribution of 10-100 MeV neutrons. The tests in both fields showed that the simulations agreed with the measured values to an accuracy of better than 20%. This is perfectly adequate for the use in radiation protection. In fact, the extended-range Bonner sphere spectrometer has not only demonstrated its advantages in routine measurements in this domain, but was also successfully employed in research work related to radiation protection. Thereby the superior performance of the new extended-range BSS as compared to the conventional one became clearly visible. In addition to the work on the Bonner sphere spectrometer, preliminary Monte-Carlo studies aiming at an upgrade of CERF were performed in this thesis. It was shown that an optimized shielding configuration at CERF could produce a radiation field with higher intensities, higher energies and a higher relative neutron fluence as compared to the present set-up. This new reference field is of interest for forthcoming measurements related to the space programme and also for testing and calibrating the Bonner spheres at energies higher than what was possible in this thesis

Technical Design Report for PANDA Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC)

This document presents the technical layout and the envisaged performance of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC) for the PANDA target spectrometer. The EMC has been designed to meet the physics goals of the PANDA experiment. The performance figures are based on extensive prototype tests and radiation hardness studies. The document shows that the EMC is ready for construction up to the front-end electronics interface

The use of thermoluminescent dosimeters for In-vivo dosimetry in a fast neutron therapy beam

Bibliography: leaves 72-77.Thermoluminescent detectors (TLD-700) have been investigated for absorbed dose measurements in a p(66)/Be neutron therapy beam at the National Accelerator Centre. Chips were selected based on their reproducibility and chip individual neutron calibration factors were derived. The dose non-linearity was determined in peak 5 and peak 6 and dose non-linearity corrections were performed. The sensitivity of TLD-700 chips with depth and off-axis distance was determined. In-vivo dose measurements were performed on seven patients (9 fields). In the entrance in-vivo dose measurements, a maximal deviation of 3.2 % was detected and a systematic difference of 1.7 % was observed. On the exit side, a maximal deviation of -7.3 % was detected and a systematic difference of -5.1 % was observed. The glow curve peak 6/5 ratio was investigated and found to correlate with the qualitative variations of the average LET in the neutron beam

Book of Abstracts

The International Symposia on Radiation Physics is devoted to current trends and potential future issues involving radiation in various applications. Attendees have an opportunity to share ideas on the underpinning interactions, the uses of radiation in research and applications in a great many fields such as biomedical applications of radiation, art and cultural heritage, Monte Carlo methods and models, radiation in environmental sciences, detection of threat material and contraband, radiation protection, shielding and dosimetry, radiation effects on materials, radiation detection and measurements, and other related topics.publishersversionpublishe