Simultaneous measurement of organic scintillator response to carbon and proton recoils

Abstract

Background: Organic scintillators are widely used for neutron detection in both basic nuclear physics and applications. While the proton light yield of organic scintillators has been extensively studied, measurements of the light yield from neutron interactions with carbon nuclei are scarce. Purpose: Demonstrate a new approach for the simultaneous measurement of the proton and carbon light yield of organic scintillators. Provide new carbon light yield data for the EJ-309 liquid and EJ-204 plastic organic scintillators. Method: A 33~MeV ${}^2$H${}^{+}$ beam from the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was impinged upon a 3-mm-thick Be target to produce a high-flux, broad-spectrum neutron beam. The double time-of-flight technique was extended to simultaneously measure the proton and carbon light yield of the organic scintillators, wherein the light output associated with the recoil particle was determined using $np$ and $n$C elastic scattering kinematics. Results: The proton and carbon light yield relations of the EJ-309 liquid and EJ-204 plastic organic scintillators were measured over a recoil energy range of approximately 0.3 to 1~MeV and 2 to 5~MeV, respectively for EJ-309, and 0.2 to 0.5~MeV and 1 to 4~MeV, respectively for EJ-204. Conclusions: These data provide new insight into the ionization quenching effect in organic scintillators and key input for simulation of the response of organic scintillators for both basic science and a broad range of applications.

arXiv comment11 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (20)

• First Results from KamLAND: Evidence for Reactor Anti-Neutrino Disappearance
• Current Status and Future Prospects of the SNO+ Experiment
• Experimental evidence of neutrinos produced in the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun
• An Experiment to Demonstrate Separation of Cherenkov and Scintillation Signals
• Comparative scintillation performance of EJ-309, EJ-276, and a novel organic glass
• Model-based Design Evaluation of a Compact, High-Efficiency Neutron Scatter Camera
• Proton Light Yield in Organic Scintillators using a Double Time-of-Flight Technique
• Quenching Factor for Low Energy Nuclear Recoils in a Plastic Scintillator
• Low Energy Light Yield of Fast Plastic Scintillators
• Measurements of anisotropic scintillation efficiency for carbon recoils in a stilbene crystal for dark matter detection
• Interaction position, time, and energy resolution in organic scintillator bars with dual-ended readout
• Observation of Reactor Antineutrinos with a Rapidly-Deployable Surface-Level Detector
• Neutron Spectroscopy for Pulsed Beams with Frame Overlap using a Double Time-of-Flight Technique
• An LED pulser for measuring photomultiplier linearity
• Detecting Cherenkov Light From 1-2 MeV Electrons in Linear Alkylbenzene
• Liquid Scintillator Response to Proton Recoils in the 10-100 keV Range
• Measurement of $\alpha$-particle quenching in LAB based scintillator in independent small-scale experiments
• Neutron Response of the EJ-254 Boron-Loaded Plastic Scintillator
• Scintillator light yield measurements with waveform digitizers
• Quenching Measurements and Modeling of a Boron-Loaded Organic Liquid Scintillator

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Nonproportionality of NaI(Tl) Scintillation Detector for Dark Matter Search Experiments
• Secondary Neutron Production from Thick Target Deuteron Breakup