Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315

Wang, Haitang; Carter, Donald; Massey, Thomas N.; Enqvist, Andreas

doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009

Title: Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315

Abstract

Organic liquid scintillators have shown promises as neutron spectrometers. Neutrons are regularly categorized into quasi-monoenergetic groups, while their pulses are exhibited in view of light outputs instead of kinetic energy. As a result the conventional resolution function associating with the full width at height maximum and the corresponding peak energy is not appropriate to be directly adopted to characterize the resolution of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator, EJ-315. In this paper, the incident neutron energies were derived with a time-of-flight technique, and collision events and a signal beam were measured in coincidence mode. We first characterized the resolution property of the EJ-315 according to the derivatives of pulse height distributions, and further investigated the EJ-315’s pulse resolution by smoothing quasi-monoenergetic neutron pulse height distributions, obtained by a Peierls-formula-based analytic model, to match the resolutions of derivatives of the same energy neutron pulses obtained from measurements. To complete the analytic model, the light output function of EJ-315 is of crucial importance and has to be obtained based on the measurement of the detector’s response matrix. However, since the detector setup deployed has a weakly non-linear response to gamma rays, the light yield in terms of volt (V) to megaelectron-volt electron equivalentmore »« less

Authors:

Wang, Haitang ^[1]; Carter, Donald ^[2]; Massey, Thomas N. ^[2]; Enqvist, Andreas ^[1]

Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States). Nuclear Engineering Program
Ohio Univ., Athens, OH (United States). Inst. of Nuclear and Particle Physics

Publication Date:: Mon Apr 04 00:00:00 EDT 2016

Research Org.:: Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development (NA-22); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation

OSTI Identifier:: 1366757

Alternate Identifier(s):: OSTI ID: 1487074

Grant/Contract Number:: NA0002534

Resource Type:: Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: Radiation Measurements

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Volume: 89; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 1350-4487

Publisher:: Elsevier

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY; Pulse height distribution; Deuterated scintillation detectors; Pulse shape discrimination; EJ-315; Time-of-ﬂight; Time-of-flight

Citation Formats


                    Wang, Haitang, Carter, Donald, Massey, Thomas N., and Enqvist, Andreas. Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315.  United States: N. p., 2016. 
        Web.  doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009.

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                    Wang, Haitang, Carter, Donald, Massey, Thomas N., & Enqvist, Andreas. Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009

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                    Wang, Haitang, Carter, Donald, Massey, Thomas N., and Enqvist, Andreas. 2016.  
        "Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1366757.

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@article{osti_1366757,

  title        = {Neutron light output function and resolution investigation of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator EJ-315},

  author       = {Wang, Haitang and Carter, Donald and Massey, Thomas N. and Enqvist, Andreas},

  abstractNote = {Organic liquid scintillators have shown promises as neutron spectrometers. Neutrons are regularly categorized into quasi-monoenergetic groups, while their pulses are exhibited in view of light outputs instead of kinetic energy. As a result the conventional resolution function associating with the full width at height maximum and the corresponding peak energy is not appropriate to be directly adopted to characterize the resolution of the deuterated organic liquid scintillator, EJ-315. In this paper, the incident neutron energies were derived with a time-of-flight technique, and collision events and a signal beam were measured in coincidence mode. We first characterized the resolution property of the EJ-315 according to the derivatives of pulse height distributions, and further investigated the EJ-315’s pulse resolution by smoothing quasi-monoenergetic neutron pulse height distributions, obtained by a Peierls-formula-based analytic model, to match the resolutions of derivatives of the same energy neutron pulses obtained from measurements. To complete the analytic model, the light output function of EJ-315 is of crucial importance and has to be obtained based on the measurement of the detector’s response matrix. However, since the detector setup deployed has a weakly non-linear response to gamma rays, the light yield in terms of volt (V) to megaelectron-volt electron equivalent (MeVee) has to be calculated. It is then applied to the neutron light output as a function of neutron energy. In conclusion, results show rather consistent pulse resolutions around 10% for mono-energetic neutrons with kinetic energy from 2 to 5MeV, and the optimal resolution slightly decreases with an increase in energy indicating a better performance of EJ-315 at a relatively higher neutron energy region.},

  doi          = {10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009},

  url          = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1366757},
  journal      = {Radiation Measurements},

  issn         = {1350-4487},

  number       = C,

  volume       = 89,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Mon Apr 04 00:00:00 EDT 2016},

  month        = {Mon Apr 04 00:00:00 EDT 2016}

}

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009

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Cited by: 11 works

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Figure 1: Simplified sketch of the facility in Edwards Accelerator Laboratory, showing the measurement tunnel that was utilized in this research in the right upper corner.

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