Measurements of neutrons produced by high-energy muons at the Boulby Underground Laboratory

Araújo, H. M.; Blockley, J.; Bungau, Cristian; Carson, M.; Chagani, H.; Daw, E. J.; Edwards, B.; Ghag, C.; Korolkova, E. V.; Kudryavtsev, V. A.; Lightfoot, P. K.; Lindote, A.; Liubarsky, I.; Lüscher, R.; Majewski, P.; Mavrokoridis, K.; McMillan, J. E.; Murphy, A. St. J.; Paling, S. M.; Cunha, J. Pinto da; Preece, R.; Robinson, M.; Smith, N. J. T.; Smith, P.F.; Spooner, N. J. C.; Sumner, T. J.; Walker, R. J.; Wang, H.; White, J. T.

doi:10.1016/j.astropartphys.2008.05.004

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Using the normalised flux through a sphere in the simulation, a muon flux of (3.75±0.09) × 10 −8 muons/s/cm 2 was deduced from the comparison between simulated and experimental measured rates. This result is in excellent agreement with the last reported value for the muon flux in the Boulby Underground Laboratory of (3.79±0.15) × 10 −8 muons/s/cm 2 [12].…”

Section: Muon Event Selectionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…To do so an idealised simulation of neutron production by a mono-energetic beam of muons in pure lead was performed, following the methodology in Refs. [12,13], and subsequently scaled by the ratio in rate observed between the data and the full detector simulation. A production rate of (4.594±0.004) × 10 −3 neutrons/muon/(g/cm 2 ) was obtained from simulations with the simplified geometry for pure lead.…”

Section: Muon-induced Neutron Yieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Reichhart

Lindote

Akimov

et al. 2013

AIP Conference Proceedings

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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.

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Section: Muon Event Selectionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Muon-induced Neutron Yieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Reichhart

Lindote

Akimov

et al. 2013

AIP Conference Proceedings

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“…Complementary to the underground experiments on neutrons induced by cosmic muons, two accelerator based experiments measured muon-induced neutron 12 15 G. V. Gorshkov(1974) [10] 16 50 I. Abt (2017) [11] and this work 20 7.6 M. F. Crouch (1952) [12][13] 40 10 G. V. Gorshkov (1971) [14] 58 -a Holborn (1965) [15] 60 10 L. Bergamasco (1970) [16] 80 10 G. V. Gorshkov (1971) [14] 110 10 L. Bergamasco (1970) [16] 150 10, 16 Gorshkov (1968[17], 1971 [18]) 800 10 G. V. Gorshkov (1971) [14] 2850 -b Boulby (2008 [8], 2013 [19]) 4300 35 L. Bergamasco (1973) [20] 4800 10 LSM (2013) [9] a The lead was mixed with rock and the neutron spectrum was measured with low statistical significance. b The target was the whole lead shielding system of the ZEPLIN-II and ZEPLIN-III experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct measurement of neutrons induced in lead by cosmic muons at a shallow underground site

Abt

Empl

et al. 2018

Astroparticle Physics

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Neutron production in lead by cosmic muons has been studied with a Gadolinium doped liquid scintillator detector. The detector was installed next to the Muon-Induced Neutron Indirect Detection EXperiment (MINIDEX), permanently located in the Tübingen shallow underground laboratory where the mean muon energy is approximately 7 GeV. The MINIDEX plastic scintillators were used to tag muons; the neutrons were detected through neutron capture and neutron-induced nuclear recoil signals in the liquid scintillator detector. Results on the rates of observed neutron captures and nuclear recoils are presented and compared to predictions from GEANT4-9.6 and GEANT4-10.3. The predicted rates are significantly too low for both versions of GEANT4. For neutron capture events, the observation exceeds the predictions by factors of 1.65 ± 0.02 (stat.) ± 0.07 (syst.) and 2.58 ± 0.03 (stat.) ± 0.11 (syst.) for GEANT4-9.6 and GEANT4-10.3, respectively. For neutron nuclear recoil events, which require neutron energies above approximately 5 MeV, the factors are even larger, 2.22 ± 0.05 (stat.) ± 0.25 (syst.) and 3.76 ± 0.09 (stat.) ± 0.41 (syst.), respectively. Also presented is the first statistically significant measurement of the spectrum of neutrons induced by cosmic muons in lead between 5 and 40 MeV. It was obtained by unfolding the nuclear recoil spectrum. The observed neutron spectrum is harder than predicted by GEANT4. An investigation of the distribution of the time difference between muon tags and nuclear recoil signals confirms the validity of the unfolding procedure and shows that GEANT4 cannot properly describe the time distribution of nuclear recoil events. In general, the description of the data is worse for GEANT4-10.3 than for GEANT4-9.6.

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“…Because they behave in a manner similar to WIMPs, fast neutrons are taken as a vital background for these rare event physics experiments at deep underground. Although the cosmogenic effects are dramatically suppressed by rock overburden [16], the energy spectrum, angular and multiplicity distribution of the fast neutrons induced by muons underground are not well understood [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Muoninduced neutron production rates in different targets have been recently measured by many experiments [24- * Corresponding Author: Dongming.Mei@usd.edu 26] through measuring neutron captures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring muon-induced neutrons with liquid scintillation detector at Soudan mine

Zhang

Mei

2014

Phys. Rev. D

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We report a direct detection of muon-induced high energy neutrons with a 12-liter neutron detector fabricated with EJ-301 liquid scintillator operating at Soudan Mine for about two years. The detector response to energy from a few MeV up to ∼ 20 MeV has been calibrated using radioactive sources and cosmic-ray muons. Subsequently, we have calculated the scintillation efficiency for nuclear recoils, up to a few hundred MeV, using Birks' law in the Monte Carlo simulation. Data from an exposure of 655.1 days were analyzed and neutron-induced recoil events were observed in the energy region from 4 MeV to 50 MeV, corresponding to fast neutrons with kinetic energy up to a few hundred MeV, depending on the scattering angle. Combining with the Monte Carlo simulation, the measured muon-induced fast neutron flux is determined to be (2.23 ± 0.52(sta.) ± 0.99(sys.)) × 10 −9 cm −2 s −1 (En > 20 MeV), in a reasonable agreement with the model prediction. The muon flux is found to be (1.65 ± 0.02(sta.) ± 0.1(sys.)) × 10 −7 cm −2 s −1 (Eµ > 1 GeV), consistent with other measurements. As a result, the muon-induced high energy gamma-ray flux is simulated to be 7.08 ×10 −7 cm −2 s −1 (Eγ > 1 MeV) for the depth of Soudan.

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Measurements of neutrons produced by high-energy muons at the Boulby Underground Laboratory

Cited by 41 publications

References 20 publications

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

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

Direct measurement of neutrons induced in lead by cosmic muons at a shallow underground site

Measuring muon-induced neutrons with liquid scintillation detector at Soudan mine

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