Development of a gated scintillation fiber neutron detector for areal density measurements of inertial confinement fusion capsules

Abstract

A detector for fuel areal density measurements in inertial confinement fusion capsules has been designed. Observation of neutrons scattered in an imploded deuterium capsule (0.27–0.6 MeV) is a promising method for areal density measurements in the National Ignition Facility DD surrogate capsules. In order to detect scattered neutrons, we need to (1) suppress interference due to the strong direct neutron burst and (2) suppress the background produced by neutrons scattering on nontarget material (mainly from the target chamber). In our detector system, we suppress direct neutrons by gating the detector. We suppress the nontarget background neutrons by placing the detector outside the target chamber and limiting the view of the detector with collimators. In addition, we are developing a lithium-glass scintillation-fiber detector (LG-SCIFI) to detect the scattered neutrons. The LG-SCIFI will work as a multichannel scintillator array. The scintillation signal will be amplified by a microchannel plate image intensifier, which is gated to accept signals only in a specific time-of-flight window for the scattered neutrons. The gated scintillation image will be recorded by a charge-coupled device. Since the detector is segmented, neutron detection events will be clearly identified as bright spots in the gated image.