Abstract
We present the first measurements of energy-dependent light output from carbon recoils in the liquid organic scintillator EJ-309. For this measurement, neutrons were produced by an associated particle deuterium–tritium generator and scattered by a volume of EJ-309 scintillator into stop detectors positioned at four fixed angles. Carbon recoils in the scintillator were isolated using triple coincidence among the associated particle detector, scatter detector, and stop detectors. The kinematics of elastic and inelastic scatter allowed data collection at eight specific carbon recoil energies between 2.86 and 3.95 MeV. We found the light output caused by carbon recoils in this energy range to be approximately 1.14% of that caused by electrons of the same energy, which is comparable to the values reported for other liquid organic scintillators. A comparison of the number of scattered neutrons at each angle to a Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended simulation indicates that the ENDF/B-VII.1 evaluation of differential cross sections for 14.1 MeV neutrons on carbon has discrepancies with the experiment as large as 55%, whereas those reported in the JENDL-4.0u evaluation agree with experiment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 82-91 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment |
| Volume | 884 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 11 2018 |
Funding
This research was performed under appointment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation International Safeguards Fellowship Program sponsored by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of International Nuclear Safeguards ( NA-241 ). This work was funded in-part by the Consortium for Verification Technology under Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration award number DE-NA0002534 . Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of International Nuclear Safeguards | NA-241 |
| U.S. Department of Energy | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |
| National Nuclear Security Administration | DE-NA0002534 |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |
| UT-Battelle |
Keywords
- Carbon recoil
- Differential cross section
- Elastic and inelastic scatter
- Neutron light output
- Organic scintillators
- Quenching