3 research outputs found
Light-yield response of liquid scintillators using 2–6 MeV tagged neutrons
Knowledge of the neutron light-yield response is crucial to the understanding of scintillator-based neutron detectors. In this work, neutrons from 2–6MeV have been used to study the scintillation light-yield response of the liquid scintillators NE 213A, EJ 305, EJ 331 and EJ 321P using event-by-event waveform digitization. Energy calibration was performed using a GEANT4 model to locate the edge positions of the Compton distributions produced by gamma-ray sources. The simulated light yield for neutrons from a PuBe source was compared to measured recoil proton distributions, where neutron energy was selected by time-of-flight. This resulted in an energy-dependent Birks parameterization to characterize the non-linear response to the lower energy neutrons. The NE 213A and EJ 305 results agree very well with existing data and are reproduced nicely by the simulation. New results for EJ 331 and EJ 321P, where the simulation also reproduces the data well, are presented
Time- and energy-resolved effects in the boron-10 based Multi-Grid and helium-3 based thermal neutron detectors
The boron-10 based Multi-Grid detector is being developed as an alternative
to helium-3 based neutron detectors. At the European Spallation Source, the
detector will be used for time-of-flight neutron spectroscopy at cold to
thermal neutron energies. The objective of this work is to investigate fine
time- and energy-resolved effects of the Multi-Grid detector, down to a few
eV, while comparing it to the performance of a typical helium-3 tube.
Furthermore, it is to characterize differences between the detector
technologies in terms of internal scattering, as well as the time
reconstruction of ~ s short neutron pulses. The data were taken at the
Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, where the Multi-Grid detector and a helium-3 tube
were installed at the ESS test beamline, V20. Using a Fermi-chopper, the
neutron beam of the reactor was chopped into a few tens of s wide pulses
before reaching the detector, located a few tens of cm downstream. The data of
the measurements show an agreement between the derived and calculated neutron
detection efficiency curve. The data also provide fine details on the effect of
internal scattering, and how it can be reduced. For the first time, the chopper
resolution was comparable to the timing resolution of the Multi-Grid detector.
This allowed a detailed study of time- and energy resolved effects, as well as
a comparison with a typical helium-3 tube.Comment: 37 pages, 21 figure
Technique for the measurement of intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination for organic scintillators using tagged neutrons
Fast-neutron/gamma-ray pulse-shape discrimination has been performed for the organic liquid scintillators NE 213A and EJ 305 using a time-of-flight based neutron-tagging technique and waveform digitization on an event-by-event basis. Gamma-ray sources and a Geant4-based simulation were used to calibrate the scintillation-light yield. The difference in pulse shape for the neutron and gamma-ray events was analyzed by integrating selected portions of the digitized waveform to produce a figure-of-merit for neutron/gamma-ray separation. This figure-of-merit has been mapped as a function of detector threshold and also of neutron energy determined from time-of-flight. It shows clearly that the well-established pulse-shape discrimination capabilities of NE 213A are superior to those of EJ 305. The extra information provided by the neutron-tagging technique has resulted in a far more detailed assessment of the pulse-shape-discrimination capabilities of these organic scintillators