Improvement of energy resolution in time-of-flight method for high energy neutron measurement

Abstract

In the time-of-flight measurement of high energy neutrons, the time resolution is often required to be as good as possible. For improvement of the energy resolution, the time-of-flight study was made by the use of Li (p, n) reaction at forward angles. Two types of detectors were tested. One was a liquid organic scintillator NE-213 5 inches (127 mm) in diameter and 127 mm thick connected with three Hamamatsu H2431 photomultipliers 2 inches (51 mm) in diameter. The other was NE-213 of the same size with a Hamamatsu R1250 127 mm in diameter. The experiment was made at /spl pi/2 beam line of 12 GeV proton synchrotron in High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK). The incident proton energy was 800 MeV, and the flight path was 5 m. Two neutron detectors were set at 0 and 5 degrees, respectively. The time resolutions for prompt gamma rays were 0.5 ns for NE-213 with three H2431 s and 1.0 ns for NE-213 with R1250. The energy resolutions for 800 MeV neutrons were derived from these values were 70 and 100 MeV, respectively.