Experimental setup and procedure for the measurement of the 7Be(n,α)α reaction at n_TOF

Abstract

The newly built second experimental area EAR2 of the n_TOF spallation neutron source at CERN allows to perform (n, charged particles) experiments on short-lived highly radioactive targets. This paper describes a detection apparatus and the experimental procedure for the determination of the cross-section of the 7Be(n,α) reaction, which represents one of the focal points toward the solution of the cosmological Lithium abundance problem, and whose only measurement, at thermal energy, dates back to 1963. The apparently unsurmountable experimental difficulties stemming from the huge 7Be γ-activity, along with the lack of a suitable neutron beam facility, had so far prevented further measurements. The detection system is subject to considerable radiation damage, but is capable of disentangling the rare reaction signals from the very high background. This newly developed setup could likely be useful also to study other challenging reactions requiring the detectors to be installed directly in the neutron beam.

arXiv commentsubmitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A

References in corpus (3)

• The Primordial Lithium Problem
• Characterization of the silicon+6LiF thermal neutron detection technique
• Supersymmetry Breaking and Dilaton Stabilization in String Gas Cosmology

Cited by in corpus (6)

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• Measurement of the 235U(n,f) cross section relative to the 6Li(n,t) and 10B(n,alpha) standards from thermal to 170 keV neutron energy range at n_TOF
• Experimental setup and procedure for the measurement of the 7Be(n,p)7Li reaction at n_TOF
• Machine learning based event classification for the energy-differential measurement of the ${}^{\text{nat}}$C(n,p) and ${}^{\text{nat}}$C(n,d) reactions
• Study of a data analysis method for the angle resolving silicon telescope
• A synchronization method for the multi-channel silicon telescope