Simulation Tools for Detector and Instrument Design

Abstract

The high performance requirements at the European Spallation Source have been driving the technological advances on the neutron detector front. Now more than ever is it important to optimize the design of detectors and instruments, to fully exploit the ESS source brilliance. Most of the simulation tools the neutron scattering community has at their disposal target the instrument optimization until the sample position, with little focus on detectors. The ESS Detector Group has extended the capabilities of existing detector simulation tools to bridge this gap. An extensive software framework has been developed, enabling efficient and collaborative developments of required simulations and analyses -- based on the use of the Geant4 Monte Carlo toolkit, but with extended physics capabilities where relevant (like for Bragg diffraction of thermal neutrons in crystals). Furthermore, the MCPL (Monte Carlo Particle Lists) particle data exchange file format, currently supported for the primary Monte Carlo tools of the community (McStas, Geant4 and MCNP), facilitates the integration of detector simulations with existing simulations of instruments using these software packages. These means offer a powerful set of tools to tailor the detector and instrument design to the instrument application.

References in corpus (7)

• Towards a More Complete and Accurate Experimental Nuclear Reaction Data Library (EXFOR): International Collaboration Between Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC)
• The Multi-Blade Boron-10-based Neutron Detector for high intensity Neutron Reflectometry at ESS
• Monte Carlo Particle Lists: MCPL
• Multi-Grid Detector for Neutron Spectroscopy: Results Obtained on Time-of-Flight Spectrometer CNCS
• First Measurements with New High-Resolution Gadolinium-GEM Neutron Detectors
• Geant4 based simulations for novel neutron detector development
• Overcoming High Energy Backgrounds at Pulsed Spallation Sources

Cited by in corpus (8)

• NCrystal : a library for thermal neutron transport
• Software-based data acquisition and processing for neutron detectors at European Spallation Source - early experience from four detector designs
• Detector rates for the Small Angle Neutron Scattering instruments at the European Spallation Source
• Performance evaluation of the Boron Coated Straws detector with Geant4
• Suppression of intrinsic neutron background in the Multi-Grid detector
• Performance study of the Jalousie detector baseline design for the ESS thermal powder diffractometer HEIMDAL through GEANT4 simulations
• Investigation of neutron scattering in the Multi-Blade detector with Geant4 simulations
• A simulational study of the indirect geometry neutron spectrometer, BIFROST at the European Spallation Source, from neutron source position to detector position