Liquid ${}^3$He Detectors for Neutrons

Abstract

The ${}^3$He(n,p) process is excellent for neutron detection between thermal and $\sim$4\,MeV because of the high cross section and near-complete energy transfer from the neutron to the proton. Traditional gaseous ${}^3$He detectors using this process typically have high levels of radiogenic backgrounds so that they cannot measure the small neutron fluxes present in underground labs for dark matter experiments. I propose a cryogenic liquid ${}^3$He detector that can be designed with tiny radiogenic backgrounds and efficiently measure neutron fluxes in low-flux environments.

9 pages, 3 figures, J Low Temp Phys (2024). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2305.00145

References in corpus (6)

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• QUEST-DMC superfluid ${}^3$He detector for sub-GeV dark matter
• Bolometric calibration of a superfluid ${}^3$He detector for Dark Matter search: direct measurement of the scintillated energy fraction for neutron, electron and muon events
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• Long nanomechanical resonators with circular cross-section
• Response of a Liquid ${}^3$He Neutron Detector