Covariance Spectroscopy for Fissile Material Detection
Nuclear fission produces multiple prompt neutrons and gammas at each fission event. The resulting daughter nuclei continue to emit delayed radiation as neutrons boil off, beta decay occurs, etc. All of the radiations are causally connected, and therefore correlated. The correlations are generally positive, but when different decay channels compete, so that some radiations tend to exclude others, negative correlations could also be observed. A similar problem of reduced complexity is that of cascades radiation, whereby a simple radioactive decay produces two or more correlated gamma rays at each decay. Covariance is the usual means for measuring correlation, and techniques of covariance mapping may be useful to produce distinct signatures of special nuclear materials (SNM). A covariance measurement can also be used to filter data streams because uncorrelated signals are largely rejected. The technique is generally more effective than a coincidence measurement. In this poster, we concentrate on cascades and the covariance filtering problem.
- Research Organization:
- National Security Technologies, LLC (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC52-06NA25946
- OSTI ID:
- 961547
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NV/25946-722; TRN: US0903151
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: NA-22 Simulations, Algorithms, and Methods (SAM) Working Group Meeting; June 2, 2009
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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