A measurement of the muon-induced neutron yield in lead at a depth of 2850 m water equivalent

Abstract

Articles you may be interested inMeasurement of the muon-induced neutron yield in liquid scintillator and stainless steel at LNGS with the LVD experiment AIP Conf. A time-gating scintillation detector for the measurement of laser-induced fast neutrons Rev. Sci. Instrum. 80, 063303 (2009); 10.1063/1.3152212 Neutron Capture and Transmission Measurements on 103Rh Down to Thermal Energies AIP Conf. Proc. 769, 953 (2005); 10.1063/1.1945162 Secondary-neutron-yield measurements by current-mode detectors Rev. Sci. Instrum. 72, 824 (2001);Abstract. We present results from the measurement of the neutron production rate in lead by high energy cosmic-ray muons at a depth of 2850 m water equivalent (mean muon energy of 260 GeV). A tonne-scale highly segmented plastic scintillator detector was utilised to detect both the energy depositions from the traversing muons as well as the delayed radiative capture signals of the induced neutrons. Complementary Monte Carlo simulations reproduce well the distributions of muons and detected muon-induced neutrons. Absolute agreement between simulation and data is of the order of 25%. By comparing the measured and simulated neutron capture rates a neutron yield in pure lead of (5.78 +0.21 −0.28 ) × 10 −3 neutrons/muon/(g/cm 2 ) has been obtained.

Modeling ionization quenching in organic scintillators

“…The mean excitation energy of the scintillating medium, I, is used in the Voltz et al model (see eqn (6)) to calculate the fraction of singlet excitation produced outside of the particle track. Values for this parameter were obtained using the Particle Data Group library.…”

“…When protons or other heavy charged particles deposit energy in organic scintillators, high excitation and ionization densities result in a reduction in scintillation efficiency-a phenomenon known as ionization quenching. While extensive research has been conducted on the response of organic scintillators to recoil nuclei, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] there remains disagreement regarding the impact of the nature of the ionizing particle on the specific luminescence. The canonical Birks model is often used to describe the ionization quenching effect though it has failed to predict the scintillation response at low recoil energies and for particles of different charge.…”

Fast neutron detection with a segmented spectrometer

“…This technique provides a smoothly varying function that covers the broad range of neutron energies used in this work. Recent work [49] has shown that there may be significant deviations from fits of Ref. [44] for plastic scintillator at low-energy recoils.…”

Performance of the Versatile Array of Neutron Detectors at Low Energy (VANDLE)

“…By applying energy and momentum conservation the maximum recoil energy of the carbon nucleus can be determined as a function of neutron energy for fully back scattered neutrons (θ n = 180 • ). However, at low detection thresholds, light yield induced by elastically scattered carbon nuclei (recoils) contributes significantly to the total light yield induced in the scintillator[29]. VANDLE is capable of running with thresholds low enough to identify and measure the light yield response curve for these carbon recoils.…”