Neutron detectors for the ESS diffractometers

Abstract

The ambitious instrument suite for the future European Spallation Source whose civil construction started recently in Lund, Sweden, demands a set of diverse and challenging requirements for the neutron detectors. For instance, the unprecedented high flux expected on the samples to be investigated in neutron diffraction or reflectometry experiments requires detectors that can handle high counting rates, while the investigation of sub-millimeter protein crystals will only be possible with large-area detectors that can achieve a position resolution as low as 200 μm. This has motivated an extensive research and development campaign to advance the state-of-the-art detector and to find new technologies that can reach maturity by the time the ESS will operate at full potential. This paper presents the key detector requirements for three of the Time-of-Flight diffraction instrument concepts selected by the Scientific Advisory Committee to advance into the phase of preliminary engineering design. We discuss the available detector technologies suitable for this particular instrument class and their major challenges. The detector technologies selected by the instrument teams to collect the diffraction patterns are briefly discussed. Analytical calculations, Monte-Carlo simulations, and real experimental data are used to develop a generic method to esti- mate the event rate in the diffraction detectors. The proposed approach is based upon conservative assumptions that use information and input parameters that reflect our current level of knowledge and understanding of the ESS project. We apply this method to make predictions for the future diffraction instruments, and thus provide additional information that can help the instrument teams with the optimisation of the detector designs.

25 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• The Multi-Blade Boron-10-based Neutron Detector for high intensity Neutron Reflectometry at ESS
• Multi-Grid Detector for Neutron Spectroscopy: Results Obtained on Time-of-Flight Spectrometer CNCS
• Characterization of the Multi-Blade 10B-based detector at the CRISP reflectometer at ISIS for neutron reflectometry at ESS
• Development of energy-resolved neutron imaging detectors at RADEN
• Software-based data acquisition and processing for neutron detectors at European Spallation Source - early experience from four detector designs
• Boron-10 lined RPCs for sub-millimeter resolution thermal neutron detectors: Conceptual design and performance considerations
• Neutron reflectometry with the Multi-Blade 10B-based detector
• Detector rates for the Small Angle Neutron Scattering instruments at the European Spallation Source
• The Multi-Blade Boron-10-based neutron detector performance using a focusing reflectometer
• Performance study of the Jalousie detector baseline design for the ESS thermal powder diffractometer HEIMDAL through GEANT4 simulations
• Towards high-rate RPC-based thermal neutron detectors using low-resistivity electrodes
• A simulational study of the indirect geometry neutron spectrometer, BIFROST at the European Spallation Source, from neutron source position to detector position