Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2010 Fall Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics
Volume 55, Number 14
Tuesday–Saturday, November 2–6, 2010; Santa Fe, New Mexico
Session GE: Detector Materials and Readout Devices |
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Chair: Steve Wender, Los Alamos National Laboratory Room: Coronado |
Friday, November 5, 2010 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
GE.00001: PIXeY---an R{\&}D Prototype Detector For Optimizing Energy And Spatial Resolution N.E. Destefano, W.R. Zimmerman, M. Gai, E.P. Bernard, N.A. Larsen, S.B. Cahn, A. Curioni, A. Lyashenko, J.A. Nikkel, Y. Shin, A.H. Young, D.N. McKinsey Noble liquid scintillators are useful detection materials for dark matter searches, neutrinoless double beta decay searches, and gamma ray Compton imaging, exhibiting good energy and spatial resolution, as well as gamma/neutron discrimination. We have constructed a prototype detector ``PIXeY'' (Particle Identification in Xenon at Yale), a two phase liquid xenon detector, to better optimize the technology. We simulated the potential variation throughout the detector in order to determine optimal liquid level placement. Grids were constructed from wire mesh to optimize both light collection efficiency and field uniformity. In addition, high quantum efficiency Hamamatsu 8778 PMTs are being used together with charge-light anti-correlation techniques to improve the energy resolution, with the design goal of an energy resolution of 1{\%} ($\sigma $/E) at 1 MeV. Once completed, PIXeY will serve as a platform for future improvements including multiple optical volumes and single wire readout. This talk will provide a progress report on this research subject. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
GE.00002: High-precision measurement of the light response of BC-418 plastic scintillator to protons with energies from 100 keV to 10 MeV Vladimir Henzl, Brian Daub, Jennifer French, June Matthews, Michael Kovash, Stephen Wender, Michael Famiano, Katrina Koehler, Mark Yuly The determination of the light response of many organic scintillators to various types of radiation has been a subject of numerous experimental as well as theoretical studies in the past. But while the data on light response to particles with energies above 1 MeV are precise and abundant, the information on light response to very low energy particles (i.e. below 1 MeV) is scarce or completely missing. In this study we measured the light response of a BC-418 scintillator to protons with energies from 100 keV to 10 MeV. The experiment was performed at Weapons Neutron Research Facility at LANSCE, Los Alamos. The neutron beam from a spallation source is used to irradiate the active target made from BC-418 plastic scintillator. The recoiled protons detected in the active target are measured in coincidence with elastically scattered incident neutrons detected by and adjacent liquid scintillator. Time of flight of the incident neutron and the knowledge of scattering geometry allow for a kinematically complete and high-precision measurement of the light response as a function of the proton energy. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
GE.00003: Performance study of the Liquid Deuterated Scintillator for DESCANT James Wong, P.E. Garrett, L. Bianco, C.S. Sumithrarachchi A novel neutron tagging array has been developed for the study of high-spin states of neutron-rich systems. This ground-breaking design is based upon an array of liquid deuterated scintillators for neutron detectors and is called the DEuterated SCintillator Array for Neutron Tagging. DESCANT will serve as an auxiliary detector for the TIGRESS spectrometer located at TRIUMF's ISAC radioactive ion beam facility. It is comprised of 70 fully close-packed neutron detectors, subtends a maximum angle of 65.5$^{\circ}$ and covers 92.6{\%} of this solid angle or 1.08$\pi$ sr. The multiple scattering of neutrons between detectors poses a major problem to overcome when performing neutron spectroscopy and is commonly dealt with by vetoing signals collected in adjacent detectors. Fast neutron scattering from deuterium is not isotropic in the centre-of-mass frame and the measured pulse height spectrum is forward-peaked. This pulse height information can be correlated with the TOF to overdetermine the neutron energy, thus rejecting multiple scattering without the need to veto nearest neighbours. Results of the performance tests using liquid deuterated scintillators will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
GE.00004: Studies of single crystal organic scintillators for neutron detection Andrew Glenn, Natalia Zaitseva, Leslie Carman, Stephen Payne, Michelle Faust, Nerine Cherepy, Sebastien Hamel, Jason Newby Organic crystal scintillators have long been used for fission energy neutron detection and identification. The gamma/neutron separation techniques, known collectively as pulse shape discrimination (PSD), are based on the relative increase in delayed florescence for neutron excitations in comparison to that of gammas. We have conducted a broad survey of the PSD properties for over one hundred single crystal scintillators produced from solution growth techniques, including $Li$ compounds which have sensitivity to lower energy neutrons via neutron capture on $^{6}Li$. Crystal growth methods utilizing temperature reduction of super-saturated solutions have allowed us to produce large volume ($>$ 100 cm$^3$) faceted organic crystal scintillators with neutron/gamma PSD comparable or superior to trans-stilbene for a subset of these materials. These results show good progress in overcoming the scalability issues of crystal scintillators for neutron detection. We present a survey of our recent results including mixed crystals of varying stilbene fraction. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
GE.00005: Characterization of a $^{6}$Li-loaded organic liquid scintillator for fast neutron spectrometry C.D. Bass, C.R. Heimbach, J.S. Nico, E.J. Beise, H. Breuer, D. Erwin, T. Langford, A. Rodrigues Fast neutrons induced by natural radioactivity and cosmic rays are important sources of background for low-background searches of dark matter, neutrinoless double beta decay, and solar neutrinos. One method for performing fast neutron spectroscopy involves a capture-gated coincidence between a fast neutron that thermalizes through elastic scattering within an organic scintillator and its subsequent capture on a nuclide having a high thermal neutron capture cross section. Thermalization within an organic scintillator occurs within a few ns, but the neutron capture time is typically of order 10s to 100s of $\mu$s. A capture signal preceded by a thermalization signal within a characteristic time can be used to select those fast neutrons that have deposited all of their kinetic energy into the scintillator, and the thermalization signal can provide spectroscopic information. We report on a number of measurements performed to characterize the properties of an organic liquid scintillator based on di-isopropyl naphthalene and loaded with $^{6}$Li. This work has been carried out within a joint UMd and NIST project to develop a fast neutron spectrometer suitable for use in a deep underground, low-background laboratory. In particular, we report on measurements of optical properties, light yield, and fast neutron response. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
GE.00006: BrilLanCe\texttrademark~detector characterization below $E_{\gamma}= 15.5$ MeV N. Brown, M.W. Ahmed, S.S. Henshaw, B.A. Perdue, S. Stave, H.R. Weller, C. Sun, Y.K. Wu, P.P. Martel, A. Teymurazyan, A. Owens, F. Quarati Lanthanum-halide crystals represent a major step in finding a room temperature photon detector having high efficiency and good timing and energy resolution over a wide range of energies. These detectors are presently being marketed under the tradename of BrilLanCe\texttrademark . We have studied the preformance of these detectors between 2.5 and 15.5 MeV using $\gamma$-ray beams produced by the HI$\vec{\gamma}$S facility. Gaussian fits to the BrilLanCe\texttrademark detector spectra were corrected for the beam energy spread to obtain the detector resolution. A 10.16 cm (diameter)x 15.24 cm(long) LaCl$_{3}$(Ce) detector and a 7.62 cm x 7.62 cm LaBr$_{3}$(Ce) detector are characterized in the present study. The energy resolution of each detector will be reported as a function of incident $\gamma$-ray energy from 2.5 to 15.5 MeV. In addition the response of these detectors to thermal neutrons will be described. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
GE.00007: The Properties of Cryogenic CMOS Avalanche Photodiodes Erik Johnson, Rory Miskimen, Christopher Stapels, Xiao Jie Chen, James Christian Physics experiments may require extreme conditions, such as temperatures down to a few Kelvin and high magnetic fields of several Tesla. Though PMTs are a standard for reading out scintillation materials, they are highly susceptible to magnetic fields and are large heat load in cryogenic environments. Avalanche photodiodes (APD) are a reasonable alternative to phototubes in that they are compact and less susceptible to magnetic fields but have smaller gains and slightly larger noise terms. Solid-state photomultipliers (SSPM) have the advantages of APDs but provide gains similar to a PMT. The SSPM operation below 70 K is limited by the noise terms associated with after pulsing, even though the quantum efficiency down to 5 K is reasonable ($\sim $45{\%} at 500 nm). Based on similar diode structures used in SSPMs, a set of APDs has been developed for operation at temperatures below 50 K, and we present the overall operation of the diodes at 5 K for the HIFROST target at the HI$\gamma $S facility at TUNL. The diodes show a slight decrease in quantum efficiency at 5 K with respect to 300 K and with a wavelength dependence. Though gains of 100 can be achieved, the prototype diode shows a proportional response to the intensity of light pulses down to 150 detected photons with a gain around 20. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, November 5, 2010 9:54AM - 10:06AM |
GE.00008: ABSTRACT WITHDRAWN |
Friday, November 5, 2010 10:06AM - 10:18AM |
GE.00009: Ultra-high-resolution microcalorimeter detectors for photon and charged-particle detection Minesh Bacrania We will present our work on the development of ultra-high-resolution microcalorimeter detectors for X-ray, gamma-ray, alpha-particle, and electron spectroscopy. These detectors, based on superconducting transition-edge sensors, offer five to twenty times better energy resolution over conventional silicon and germanium detectors. This presentation will discuss the physics and technology of microcalorimeter detector systems and highlight recent measurement results relevant to nuclear safeguards and nuclear forensics. We will also discuss potential application of these detectors to photon and charged-particle measurements for fundamental nuclear-physics research. [Preview Abstract] |
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