Estimates of TPR spectrometer instrumental signal-to-background ratios and count rate limits for ITER like plasmas

Abstract

The work presented is a realistic simulation of the response function for a detection efficiency optimized Thin-foil proton recoil (TPR) neutron spectrometer. The TPR spectrometer consists of a thin foil acting as neutron-to-proton converter followed by ΔE-E detectors operating in coincidence mode. In this work, two different spectrometer designs were considered using segmented silicon detectors. Design 1 has slightly better resolution while design 2 is more compact and has higher efficiency. The TPR spectrometer response functions were simulated in the energy range 8–18 MeV in steps of 40 keV for the two designs using the dedicated Monte Carlo code GEANT4. The resulting simulated response functions were broadened using experimentally determined energy resolutions of the detectors, in order to produce more realistic response functions. Using these broadened response functions together with an ITER like neutron spectrum and neutron induced background simulations ΔE/E energy deposition plots were created. The energy-cuts, for 14 MeV neutron signal identification, were applied to the ΔE-E plots leading to an estimate of the expected signal-to-background ratio. In addition, pile-up fraction and maximum expected count rates were estimated. Results show that the ΔE-E energy cuts show a great prospect of increasing the signal-to background ratio for the TPR spectrometer. In addition the TPR spectrometer has energy resolution (FWHM/E) of around 5% for 14 MeV neutrons for both investigated designs. The spectrometer can cope with maximum count rate expected and have a sufficient signal-to-background ratio in the neutron energy range of interest to perform fuel ion ratio measurements. However an increase of acquisition channels would be beneficial to limit the pile-up rate.