Proton Light Yield in Organic Scintillators using a Double Time-of-Flight Technique

Abstract

Recent progress in the development of novel organic scintillators necessitates modern characterization capabilities. As the primary means of energy deposition by neutrons in these materials is n-p elastic scattering, knowledge of the proton light yield is paramount. This work establishes a new model-independent method to continuously measure proton light yield in organic scintillators over a broad energy range. Using a deuteron breakup neutron source at the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an array of organic scintillators, the proton light yield of EJ-301 and EJ-309, commercially available organic liquid scintillators from Eljen Technology, were measured via a double time-of-flight technique. The light yield was determined using a kinematically over-constrained system in the proton energy range of 1-20 MeV. The effect of pulse integration length on the magnitude and shape of the proton light yield relation was also explored. This work enables accurate simulation of the performance of advanced neutron detectors and supports the development of next-generation neutron imaging systems.

18 pages, 10 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Model-based Design Evaluation of a Compact, High-Efficiency Neutron Scatter Camera
• Neutron Spectroscopy for Pulsed Beams with Frame Overlap using a Double Time-of-Flight Technique
• The light-yield response of a NE-213 liquid-scintillator detector measured using 2 -- 6 MeV tagged neutrons

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Comparative scintillation performance of EJ-309, EJ-276, and a novel organic glass
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• Proton light yield of fast plastic scintillators for neutron imaging
• Simultaneous measurement of organic scintillator response to carbon and proton recoils
• Absolute light yield of the EJ-204 plastic scintillator
• Neutron Response of the EJ-254 Boron-Loaded Plastic Scintillator
• Scintillator light yield measurements with waveform digitizers
• Characterization of plastic scintillator bars using fast neutrons from D-D and D-T reactions