No Arabic abstract
Detailed characterization of the newly available plastic scintillator (EJ-299-33A) having the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) property has been carried out in case of a large-sized detector (5 in.$times$5 in.). The pulse height response of the scintillator for nearly mono-energetic neutrons has been reported in case of neutron energies E$_n$ =3, 6 and 9 MeV. Important properties (figure-of-merit (FOM), time resolution, detection efficiency) of the detector has been compared with a commonly used liquid organic scintillator based detector of the same size coupled to the same PMT for uniformity in comparison. The results show that the plastic scintillator detector has about 12$%$ better time resolution. However, the FOM and detection efficiency were found to be lower than that of the liquid scintillator detector by 40 - 50$%$ and $sim $25$%$, respectively. The possibility of using the new plastic scintillator in large-scale nuclear physics experiments has been pointed out.
Organic scintillators doped with capture agents provide a detectable signal for neutrons over a broad energy range. This work characterizes the fast and slow neutron response of EJ-254, an organic plastic scintillator with 5% natural boron loading by weight. For fast neutrons, the primary mechanism for light generation in organic scintillators is n-p elastic scattering. To study the fast neutron response, the proton light yield of EJ-254 was measured at the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Using a broad-spectrum neutron source and a double time-of-flight technique, the EJ-254 proton light yield was obtained over the energy range of approximately 270 keV to 4.5 MeV and determined to be in agreement with other plastic scintillators comprised of the same polymer base. To isolate the slow neutron response, an AmBe source with polyethylene moderator was made incident on the EJ-254 scintillator surrounded by an array of EJ-309 observation detectors. Events in the EJ-254 target coincident with the signature 477.6 keV $gamma$ ray (resulting from deexcitation of the residual $^{7}$Li nucleus following boron neutron capture) were identified. Pulse shape discrimination was used to evaluate the temporal differences in the response of EJ-254 scintillation signals arising from $gamma$-ray and fast/slow neutron interactions. Clear separation between $gamma$-ray and fast neutrons signals was not achieved and the neutron capture feature was observed to overlap both the $gamma$-ray and fast neutron bands. Taking into account the electron light nonproportionality, the neutron-capture light yield in EJ-254 was determined to be 89.4$pm$1.1 keVee.
In this paper we report studies of the Fermi potential and loss per bounce of ultracold neutron (UCN) on a deuterated scintillator (Eljen-299-02D). These UCN properties of the scintillator enables a wide variety of applications in fundamental neutron research.
We have constructed and tested a novel plastic-scintillator-based solid-state active proton target for use in nuclear spectroscopic studies with nuclear reactions induced by an ion beam in inverse kinematics. The active target system, named Stack Structure Solid organic Scintillator Active Target (S4AT), consists of five layers of plastic scintillators, each with a 1-mm thickness. To determine the reaction point in the thickness direction, we exploit the difference in the energy losses due to the beam particle and the charged reaction product(s) in the scintillator material. S4AT offers the prospect of a relatively thick target while maintaining a good energy resolution. By considering the relative energy loss between different layers, the energy loss due to unreacted beam particles can be eliminated. Such procedure, made possible by the multi-layer structure, is essential to eliminate the effect of unreacted accompanying beam particles, thus enabling its operation at a moderate beam intensity of up to a few Mcps. We evaluated the performance of S4AT by measuring the elastic proton-proton scattering using a 70-MeV proton beam at Cyclotron and Radioisotope Center (CYRIC), Tohoku University.
Scintillator doped with a high neutron-capture cross-section material can be used to detect neutrons via their resulting gamma rays. Examples of such detectors using liquid scintillator have been successfully used in high-energy physics experiments. However, a liquid scintillator can leak and is not as amenable to modular or complex shapes as a solid scintillator. Polystyrene-based scintillators from a variety of gadolinium compounds with varying concentrations were polymerized in our laboratory. The light output, emission spectra, and attenuation length of our samples were measured and light collection strategies using a wavelength shifting (WLS) fiber were evaluated. The measured optical parameters were used to tune a Geant4-based optical Monte Carlo, enabling the trapping efficiency to be calculated. This technology was also evaluated as a possible neutron veto for the direct detection dark matter experiment, Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (SuperCDMS).
Pulse shape discriminating scintillator materials in many cases allow the user to identify two basic kinds of pulses arising from two kinds of particles: neutrons and gammas. An uncomplicated solution for building a classifier consists of a two-component mixture model learned from a collection of pulses from neutrons and gammas at a range of energies. Depending on the conditions of data gathered to be classified, multiple classes of events besides neutrons and gammas may occur, most notably pileup events. All these kinds of events are anomalous and, in cases where the class of the particle is in doubt, it is preferable to remove them from the analysis. This study compares the performance of several machine learning and analytical methods for using the scores from the two-component model to identify anomalous events and in particular to remove pileup events. A specific outcome of this study is to propose a novel anomaly score, denoted G, from an unsupervised two-component model that is conveniently distributed on the interval [-1,1].