Alpha Coincidence Spectroscopy studied with GEANT4

Conference · Sat Nov 02 00:00:00 EDT 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/NSSMIC.2013.6829561· OSTI ID:1178897

Dion, Michael P.; Miller, Brian W.; Tatishvili, Gocha; Warren, Glen A.

Abstract The high-energy side of peaks in alpha spectra, e.g. 241Am, as measured with a silicon detector has structure caused mainly by alpha-conversion electron and to some extent alphagamma coincidences. We compare GEANT4 simulation results to 241Am alpha spectroscopy measurements with a passivated implanted planar silicon detector. A large discrepancy between the measurements and simulations suggest that the GEANT4 photon evaporation database for 237Np (daughter of 241Am decay) does not accurately describe the conversion electron spectrum and therefore was found to have large discrepancies with experimental measurements. We describe how to improve the agreement between GEANT4 and alpha spectroscopy for actinides of interest by including experimental measurements of conversion electron spectroscopy into the photon evaporation database.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1178897
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-99697
• Resource Relation: Conference: IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC 2013), October 27-November 2, 2013, Seoul, South Korea, 1-3
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English