A sectioned spectrometer of fast neutrons

Abstract

Development of a capture gated spectrometer on the basis of a liquid organic scintillator doped with enriched 6Li is discussed. Particular interest is evoked by the good pulse height resolution of the spectrometer for 14-MeV neutrons, which is expected to be very high, ∼10–15%. This resolution is attained by compensating for the nonlinearity of the light yield in the scintillator owing to the use of separate optically isolated sections, which independently detect scintillations from each recoil proton. The detector is sensitive to fluence rates ranging from 10−4 to 102 cm−2 s−1 above a threshold of 500 keV under conditions of uncorrelated γ-ray background at a level of up to 102 s−1 (E > 100 keV). A pilot model of the detector based on a scintillator without a lithium dopant has been produced and tested. The detector efficiency is governed by the scintillator volume (∼1.2 l); for 3-MeV neutrons, its value is 0.2–0.5%. The response of the pilot detector to neutrons from a Pu-α-Be source with energies of up to 10 MeV has been measured. Initial testing indicates a low threshold at an ∼600-keV energy of a recoil proton. A good spectral response is obtained using the criterion that three optical sections of the detector operate at a time. This spectrometer can find application in low-background experiments in basic physics research, as well as in space research and nuclear medicine for measuring the parameters of the neutron flux.