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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1990

HEAO 1 A-2 low-energy detector X-ray spectra of the Cygnus Loop

The Cygnus Loop supernova remnant was observed by the A-2 low-energy detector (LED) proportional counters on the HEAO 1 satellite. Recent improvements to the non-X-ray background rejection and detector response simulation have allowed production of the most accurate spectra of the Cygnus Loop to date. Three separate regions of the Cygnus Loop were observed. Single-temperature, Raymond-Smith models are inadequate to describe the spectra, but two component model fits are good. Temperature, column density, and emission measure variations across the Cygnus Loop are found. These results are interpreted and compared with previous work.

Leahy, D. A.↗
NASA NTRS1992

HEAO-1 analysis of Low Energy Detectors (LED)

The activities at Penn State University are described. During the period Oct. 1990 to Dec. 1991 work on HEAO-1 analysis of the Low Energy Detectors (LED) concentrated on using the improved detector spectral simulation model and fitting diffuse x-ray background spectral data. Spectral fitting results, x-ray point sources, and diffuse x-ray sources are described.

Nousek, John A.↗
NASA NTRS2001

LDCM Preliminary Thermal Trades

The expected cost of adding thermal bands to the next generation Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) could be significant. This viewgraph presentation investigates both traditional cooled cross-track scanners and new architectures (cooled and uncooled) which could enable a low cost thermal capability. The presentation includes surveys of applications of Landsat thermal data and the architecture of thermal instruments. It also covers new thermal architecture sensor trades, ALI Architecture with Uncooled TIR Detectors, and simulated thermal imagery.

Ryan, Robert↗
NASA NTRS2006

Sensor And Method For Detecting A Superstrate

Method and apparatus are provided for determining a superstrate on or near a sensor, e.g., for detecting the presence of an ice superstrate on an airplane wing or a road. In one preferred embodiment, multiple measurement cells are disposed along a transmission line. While the present invention is operable with different types of transmission lines, construction details for a presently preferred coplanar waveguide and a microstrip waveguide are disclosed. A computer simulation is provided as part of the invention for predicting results of a simulated superstrate detector system. The measurement cells may be physically partitioned, nonphysically partitioned with software or firmware, or include a combination of different types of partitions. In one embodiment, a plurality of transmission lines are utilized wherein each transmission line includes a plurality of measurement cells. The plurality of transmission lines may be multiplexed with the signal from each transmission line being applied to the same phase detector. In one embodiment, an inverse problem method is applied to determine the superstrate dielectric for a transmission line with multiple measurement cells.

Arndt, G. Dickey↗
DOE OSTI2023

Comparison of Measured and Simulated Neutron Counting with 3He Detectors and the Subcritical Water-Moderated UO2 7uPCX Assembly

An experiment designed to compare neutron noise analysis techniques on subcritical assemblies using differing neutron detector designs was developed as a collaborative effort between the Institut de radioprotection et de surete nucleaire (IRSN), Los Alamos (LANL), Lawrence Livermore (LLNL), and Sandia National Laboratories. This experiment has the final goal of characterizing neutron noise analysis accuracy in determining multiplication in light water systems for various neutron detection systems. This experiment utilized the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) facility at Sandia National Laboratories. The 7uPCX is an assembly designed to investigate light water systems with fuel enrichment above 5% and is able to use square or hex grid plates with varying pitches.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Machine Learning for DUNE Supernova Trigger

One of the major scientific goals of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is to detect and measure the neutrino flux from galactic core-collapse supernovae. These neutrinos, which exist in the low energy range of up to a few tens of MeV and are responsible for carrying away over 99% of the gravitational binding energy of the supernova, provide an opportunity to study the end of life evolution of massive stars, as well as unique properties and interactions of neutrinos. Because galactic supernovae are expected to occur only on the timespan of every few decades, it is crucial that DUNE is able to detect supernova neutrino interactions when they occur. However, detecting these supernova interactions requires sifting through a large amount of data, and DUNE detectors require a trigger to signal when supernova neutrino events occur. Machine learning provides a potential approach to creating this trigger. This project generates ADC and ground truth images of neutrino interactions in a LArTPC detector as simulated by the Model of Argon Reaction Low Energy Yields (MARLEY) to be used for machine learning. The eventual goal of this work is to facilitate DUNE s detection of supernova neutrino interactions by building a machine learning pipeline to train the trigger algorithm.

Damish, Stephanie↗
DOE OSTI2023

DRiFT - Release 2.1.0: Organic Scintillators and Gas Detectors

DRiFT (a Detector Response Function Toolkit) is LANL-developed software that post-processes output from the extensively validated radiation transport code, MCNP, and generates realistic nuclear instrumentation response. DRiFT is designed to be flexible, enabling users to specify detector type and many experimental settings, as well as accommodating the addition of their own desired features. The focus of this release is on organic scintillator, gas detector, and associated capabilities, while semiconductor features are still under development. Organic scintillators are widely used in the areas of nuclear safeguards and nuclear non-proliferation efforts. DRiFT has several diagnostic and detector physics features relevant to detailed scintillator simulations including: tracking source particle information, scintillation light production, the effects of PMT quantum efficiency and gain, and digitizer settings. Users can select responses from many scintillator and PMT types supported natively by DRiFT, or add their own by following the instructions in this document. DRiFT also has several diagnostic and detector physics features relevant to neutron gas detector simulations including: gas detector wall effects, inactive areas at the end of detector tubes, and effects of a preamplifier. We acknowledge that DRiFT is under active development, bug reports and general questions and comments should be directed to Madison Andrews, madison@lanl.gov. This manual is divided into four parts: I) An overview of DRiFT, including how to obtain and install the executable, II) A description of the detector physics related to scintillators available, III) a description of more general DRiFT features the user may find useful, and IV) a description of the test suite and examples made available with the code release.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

Monte Carlo Simulation of Background and Source Measurements with CSG and CAD Geometries

Detecting radioactive sources in an urban environment is difficult due to the large magnitude and variability of the background radiation. To support the search mission of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a project was undertaken to determine if first-principles modeling and simulation could be used to accurately predict the response of radiation detectors in urban environments. This study demonstrates that the simulated detector responses to photon radiation from both an isotopic source and the background compare well to benchmark-quality measurements in a large urban-like test environment. Simulation results using a traditional combinatorial solid geometry and a CAD model generated from LiDAR measurements gave very similar detector responses. With this validation, further simulations could be used to predict detector responses for various situations in real urban settings.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

Improved heavy-ion PID using scintillation light detector with neural network analysis: a Monte Carlo simulation study

The photon collection efficiency of gaseous scintillator detectors varies according to the position of the impinging charged particles in the medium that generates scintillation light. Thus, when impinging particles are distributed over a large area, the intrinsic photon-number resolution of the system is affected by a large variation. This work presents and discusses a method for adjusting the total number of detected photons to account for variation in the photon collection efficiency as a function of the position of the light source within the scintillating medium. The method was developed and validated by processing data from systematic simulation studies based on GEANT4 that model the response of the Energy Loss Optical Scintillation System (ELOSS) detector. The position of the charged particle is calculated using a deep neural network algorithm. This is accomplished by analyzing the distribution of scintillation light recorded by the array of photosensors. The estimated particle position is then used to calculate the correction factor and adjust the amount of captured light to account for variations in the photon collection efficiency. The neural network algorithm provides excellent tracking capabilities, achieving sub-millimeter position resolution and an angular resolution of 12 mrad, approaching the performance of traditional tracking detectors (e.g., drift chambers). The present method can be generalized to any optical scintillation system where the photon collection efficiency depends on the position of the impinging particle.

Heavy-ion detectors↗
DOE OSTI2026

GPU-Accelerated Analytic Simulation of Sparse Ionization Signal Formation in Pixelated Projection Detector

This paper presents a GPU-accelerated simulation package, TRED, for next-generation neutrino detectors with pixelated charge readout, leveraging community-driven software ecosystems to ensure adaptability and extensibility. We introduce two generic contributions: (i) an effective-charge representation based on Gaussian quadrature rules, in which the linear- interpolation factors for the field response inside each voxel are absorbed into the effective charge, and (ii) a sparse, block- binned tensor representation that enables efficient FFT-based computation of induced signals on readout electrodes for sparsely activated detector volumes. The former captures structure inside a voxel without dense sampling, while the latter achieves low memory usage and scalable runtime, as demonstrated in bench- mark studies. The underlying data representation is applicable to large-scale detectors and to other computational problems involving sparse activity.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulation of the spatial shift in detector response for polarized protons within a calorimeter

Measurement of the helicity dependent elastic electron-proton scattering cross section provides a key means of investigating parity violation within the proton. However, such measurements exhibit potential instrumental effects associated with the detection of polarized recoiled protons. In particular, spin-orbit interactions within a massive detector induce a systematic spatial shift in the detector signal. In this study, we determine the size of this shift using the Geant4 simulation toolkit. For a typical hadron calorimeter, we found a polarization dependent shift on the order of 0.01-0.1 mm, multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the typical spatial resolution seen in hadronic calorimeters. Additionally, we provide the custom modifications required of the Geant4 source code to implement the quasi-elastic scattering of polarized protons incident on nuclei in the detector. The modifications are readily extendable to generic matter sources, and can be used for the study of additional spin dependent observables in Geant4.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

A large area 100-channel PICOSEC Micromegas detector with time resolution at the 20 ps level

Abstract The PICOSEC Micromegas precise timing detector is based on a Cherenkov radiator coupled to a photocathode operating in a semi-transparent mode and a Micromegas amplification structure. The first proof of concept single-channel prototype was able to achieve a time resolution below 25 ps. One of the crucial aspects in the development of precise timing gaseous detectors applicable in high-energy physics experiments is a modular design that enables large area coverage. The first 19-channel multi-pad prototype with an active area of approximately 10 cm 2 suffered from degraded timing resolution due to the non-uniformity of the preamplification gap thickness. A new 100 cm 2 detector module with 100 channels based on a rigid hybrid ceramic/FR4 Micromegas board for improved drift gap uniformity was developed. Initial measurements with 80 GeV/c muons showed improvements in timing response over the measured pads and a time resolution below 25 ps. More recent measurements with a thinner drift gap detector module and newly developed RF pulse amplifiers show that the pad centre resolution can be enhanced to the level of 17 ps. This work will present the development of the detector from structural simulations, design, and beam test commissioning with a focus on the timing performance of a thinner drift gap detector module in combination with new electronics using an automated timing scan method.

Utrobicic, A.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Optical detector calibrator system

An optical detector calibrator system simulates a source of optical radiation to which a detector to be calibrated is responsive. A light source selected to emit radiation in a range of wavelengths corresponding to the spectral signature of the source is disposed within a housing containing a microprocessor for controlling the light source and other system elements. An adjustable iris and a multiple aperture filter wheel are provided for controlling the intensity of radiation emitted from the housing by the light source to adjust the simulated distance between the light source and the detector to be calibrated. The geared iris has an aperture whose size is adjustable by means of a first stepper motor controlled by the microprocessor. The multiple aperture filter wheel contains neutral density filters of different attenuation levels which are selectively positioned in the path of the emitted radiation by a second stepper motor that is also controlled by the microprocessor. An operator can select a number of detector tests including range, maximum and minimum sensitivity, and basic functionality. During the range test, the geared iris and filter wheel are repeatedly adjusted by the microprocessor as necessary to simulate an incrementally increasing simulated source distance. A light source calibration subsystem is incorporated in the system which insures that the intensity of the light source is maintained at a constant level over time.

Strobel, James P.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Differentiable Simulation of a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber

Liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs) are widely used in particle detection for their tracking and calorimetric capabilities. The particle physics community actively builds and improves high-quality simulators for such detectors in order to develop physics analyses in a realistic setting. The ability of these simulators to mimic real, measured data is limited by the modeling of the physical detectors used for data collection. This modeling can be improved by performing dedicated calibration measurements. Conventional approaches calibrate individual detector parameters or processes one at a time. However, the impact of detector processes is entangled, making this a poor description of the underlying physics. We introduce a differentiable simulator that enables a gradient-based optimization, allowing for the first time a simultaneous calibration of all detector parameters. We describe the procedure of making a differentiable simulator, highlighting the challenges of retaining the physics quality of the standard, non-differentiable version while providing meaningful gradient information. We further discuss the advantages and drawbacks of using our differentiable simulator for calibration. Finally, we provide a starting point for extensions to our approach, including applications of the differentiable simulator to physics analysis pipelines.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Graph neural network for neutrino physics event reconstruction

Liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detector technology offers a wealth of high-resolution information on particle interactions, and leveraging that information to its full potential requires sophisticated automated reconstruction techniques. Here, this article describes NUGRAPH 2, a graph neural network for low-level reconstruction of simulated neutrino interactions in a LArTPC detector. Simulated neutrino interactions in the MicroBooNE detector geometry are described as heterogeneous graphs, with energy depositions on each detector plane forming nodes on planar subgraphs. The network utilizes a multihead attention message-passing mechanism to perform background filtering and semantic labeling on these graph nodes, identifying those associated with the primary physics interaction with 98.0% efficiency and labeling them according to particle type with 94.9% efficiency. The network operates directly on detector observables across multiple two-dimensional representations but utilizes a three-dimensional-context-aware mechanism to encourage consistency between these representations. Model inference takes 0.12 s / event on a CPU and 0.005 s / event batched on a GPU. This architecture is designed to be a general-purpose solution for particle reconstruction in neutrino physics, with the potential for deployment across a broad range of detector technologies, and offers a core convolution engine that can be leveraged for a variety of tasks beyond the two described in this paper.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Enhancing ICARUS and REDTOP Software and Hardware: Event Generator Interface Development and Calorimeter Tile Prototype

ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) is a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) detector that pursues the sterile neutrino, which relies on accurate simulations of neutrino-argon interactions. REDTOP (Rare Eta Decays To Observe new Physics) is a proposed low-energy, high-intensity meson factory designed to explore rare $\eta$/$\eta'$ meson decays and probe physics beyond the Standard Model. As a next-generation experiment, this requires both accurate simulations and innovative detector technologies. This project contributes to both ICARUS, from a simulation perspective, and REDTOP, from both a simulation and detection perspective, through the event generation of lepton-nucleon interactions and the physical enhancement of the calorimeter technology within the REDTOP detector. We developed an interface between ACHILLES (A CHIcago Land Lepton Event Simulator), a theory-driven lepton-level event generator, and GENIE, a robust event generator framework used for neutrino physics. By incorporating the precise theoretical cross-section calculations of ACHILLES into the experimental realism of GENIE, the interface allows for improved accuracy of neutrino-nucleon simulations, which can be adapted for the proton beam specifications of the REDTOP meson factory as well as for the ICARUS experiment. In parallel, we developed an improved prototype for the ADRIANO2 (A Dual Readout Integrally Active Non-segmented Option) dual-readout calorimeter tiles for the REDTOP detector. To improve the efficiency of the lead-glass tiles trapping Cherenkov light for energy reconstruction and particle identification, we optimized the application of a highly reflective coating. Through viscosity and thickness control, masking, and a custom spray technique, we refined the coating process to reduce surface defects and improve light yield. Together, these efforts strengthen the ICARUS neutrino program and REDTOP's capability of detecting rare decay events.

Visser, Erin [Michigan State U.] (ORCID:0009000184↗
DOE OSTI2026

Design optimization of MAPS-based detectors using a data-driven fast simulation approach

A parametric simulation tool for pixel sensors is presented. A realistic pixel response is simulated purely based on measurement input, without requiring detailed knowledge of the underlying manufacturing process. As such, it provides an efficient alternative to the use of Technology Computer-Aided Design simulations, which typically depend on proprietary process information. Due to its parametric approach, the package is fast and thus particularly useful for larger detector systems and high hit rate environments. This work presents measurements, simulation and its validation for the MALTA2 sensor. It is a small collection electrode monolithic active pixel sensor produced in the Tower 180 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor imaging process. Modifications to the sensor’s periphery, mainly in the hit merger, are studied in order to optimize the performance for tracking and calorimetry. This optimization is of special interest as part of the MALTA3 sensor redesign in the 65 nm Tower Partners Semiconductor Co. process.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

RadSim: Detector Response

This package simulates the expected output gamma spectra from a gamma detector for given configuration.

Hangal, DhanushA [Lawrence Livermore National Labo↗