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

Journal Article · Mon Apr 04 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Radiation Measurements

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.03.009· OSTI ID:1366757

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

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

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.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: 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
• Grant/Contract Number: NA0002534
• OSTI ID: 1366757
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1487074
• Journal Information: Radiation Measurements, Vol. 89, Issue C; ISSN 1350-4487
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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