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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 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

In situ X-ray area detector flat-field correction at an operating photon energy without flat illumination

Flat-field calibration of X-ray area detectors is a challenge due to the inability to generate an X-ray flat-field at the selected photon energy the beamline operates at, which has a strong influence on the measurement behavior of the detector. A method is presented in which a simulated flat-field correction is calculated without flat-field measurements. Instead, a series of quick scattering measurements from an amorphous scatterer is used to calculate a flat-field response. The ability to rapidly obtain a flat-field response allows for recalibration of an X-ray detector as needed without significant expenditure of either time or effort. Area detectors on the beamlines used, such as the Pilatus 2M CdTe, PE XRD1621 and Varex XRD 4343CT, were found to have detector responses that drift slightly over timescales of several weeks or after exposure to high photon flux, suggesting the need to more frequently recalibrate with a new flat-field correction map.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

NUMI Flux Systematic Uncertainties

The Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals (ICARUS) detector is a 476 t active liquid argon time projection chamber neutrino detector at Fermilab. ICARUS lies 795 m downstream and 5.75◦ off-axis from the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam. To create a neutrino beam NuMI directs pulsed beam of 120 GeV protons onto a graphite target to create hadrons, which are then focused by magnetic horns and allowed to decay into neutrinos. At the ICARUS off-axis angle the neutrino flux originates from the decays of unfocused/antifocused pions decays and from high-transverse momentum kaon decays. These contributions allow ICARUS to observe a significant flux of (anti-)electron and (anti-)muon neutrinos in a kinematic region relevant to the upcoming DUNE experiment. These factors also introduce various model uncertainties that have not been studied in detail by existing on-axis experiments. This poster will explore the systematic uncertainties in the NuMI flux at ICARUS that arise from uncertainties on hadron interaction cross sections and beamline operation conditions.

Alrahman, Fatima Abd [Houston U.]↗
DOE OSTI2021

Low Temperature Microcalorimeters for Decay Energy Spectroscopy

Low Temperature Detectors have been used to measure embedded radioisotopes in a measurement mode known as Decay Energy Spectroscopy (DES) since 1992. DES microcalorimeter measurements have been used for applications ranging from neutrino mass measurements to metrology to measurements for safeguards and medical nuclides. While the low temperature detectors have extremely high intrinsic energy resolution (several times better than semiconductor detectors), the energy resolution achieved in practice is strongly dependent on factors such as sample preparation method. This review seeks to present the literature consensus on what has been learned by looking at the energy resolution as a function of various choices of detector, absorber, and sample preparation methods.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Time Alignment of the CMS Hadron Calorimeter

The Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was recently upgraded for Run 3 (2022-2025) to introduce depth segmentation and online timing measurements. With increased segmentation and readout channels, the HCAL provides new timing capabilities for jets and hadronic tau decays with nearly 4π coverage and sensitivity to highly displaced decays within the calorimeter volume. Recent HCAL timing scans provide a valuable look at artificially delayed jets in collision data and are crucial to improving the detector’s performance. Online timing is utilized for detector alignment based on positioning the pulse rising edge, achieving an alignment accuracy of 0.5 ns, considerably higher than previous energy-weighting based approaches. Using precision arrival time measurements, significant advances have been made in understanding the propagation of hadronic showers throughout the calorimeter.

Kopp, Gillian [Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Analog Front-end for the LGAD Based Precision Timing Application in CMS ETL

The analog front-end for the Low Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD) based precision timing application in the CMS Endcap Timing Layer (ETL) has been prototyped in a 65 nm CMOS mini-ASIC named ETROC0. Serving as the very first prototype of ETL readout chip (ETROC), ETROC0 aims to study and demonstrate the performance of the analog frontend, with the goal to achieve 40 to 50 ps time resolution per hit with LGAD (therefore reach about 30ps per track with two detector-layer hits per track). ETROC0 consists of preamplifier and discriminator stages, which amplifies the LGAD signal and generates digital pulses containing time of arrival and time over threshold information. This paper will focus on the design considerations that lead to the ETROC front-end architecture choice, the key design features of the building blocks, the methodology of using the LGAD simulation data to evaluate and optimize the front-end design. The ETROC0 prototype chips have been extensively tested using charge injection and the measured performance agrees well with simulation. The initial beam test results are also presented, with time resolution of around 33 ps observed from the preamplifier waveform analysis and around 41 ps from the discriminator pulses analysis. A subset of ETROC0 chips have also been tested to a total ionizing dose of 100 MRad with X-ray and no performance degradation been observed.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

A flexible test facility for liquid xenon detector development

As liquid xenon time projection chambers scale to ever-larger sizes, so too do the engineering challenges they pose. Here, we describe a large, flexible, multipurpose test facility capable of supporting the development of a number of key aspects of liquid xenon detector systems. Example applications of this facility include characterization of large-area light and charge sensor arrays, tests of xenon purification techniques and materials compatibility, and investigations into high-voltage phenomena. This facility uses an automated and remotely monitored cryo-cooling system based on immersion of the test chamber in a liquid bath rather than conductive coupling, leading to advantages in temperature and pressure stability, as well as increasing required response times in the case of cooling-power loss. Design advantages, operational procedures, and performance of the facility are described, as well as five examples of liquid xenon test chambers that use the facility.

Dark Matter detectors↗
DOE OSTI2022

Electronics for Fast Timing

Picosecond-level timing will be an important component of the next generation of particle physics detectors. The ability to add a 4$^{th}$ dimension to our measurements will help address the increasing complexity of events at hadron colliders and provide new tools for precise tracking and calorimetry for all experiments. Detectors are described in detail on other whitepapers. In this note, we address challenges in electronics design for the new generations of fast timing detectors

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Design of a multi-detector, single line-of-sight, time-of-flight system to measure time-resolved neutron energy spectra

In the dynamic environment of burning, thermonuclear deuterium–tritium plasmas, diagnosing the time-resolved neutron energy spectrum is of critical importance. Strategies exist for this diagnosis in magnetic confinement fusion plasmas, which presently have a lifetime of ~10 12 longer than inertial confinement fusion (ICF) plasmas. In this work, we present a novel concept for a simple, precise, and scale-able diagnostic to measure time-resolved neutron spectra in ICF plasmas. The concept leverages general tomographic reconstruction techniques adapted to time-of-flight parameter space, and then employs an updated Monte Carlo algorithm and National Ignition Facility-relevant constraints to reconstruct the time-evolving neutron energy spectrum. Reconstructed spectra of the primary 14.028 MeV n DT peak are in good agreement with the exact synthetic spectra. The technique is also used to reconstruct the time-evolving downscattered spectrum, although the present implementation shows significantly more error.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

First Measurement of Charged-Current Muon-Neutrino-Induced 𝐾 + Production on Argon Using the MicroBooNE Detector

The MicroBooNE experiment is an 85 tonne active mass liquid argon time projection chamber neutrino detector exposed to the on-axis Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. One of MicroBooNE’s physics goals is the precise measurement of neutrino interactions on argon in the 1 GeV energy regime. Building on the capabilities of the MicroBooNE detector, this analysis identifies 𝐾 + mesons, a key signature for the study of strange particle production in neutrino interactions. This measurement is furthermore valuable for background estimation for future nucleon decay searches and for improved reconstruction and particle identification capabilities in experiments such as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. In this Letter, we present the first-ever measurement of a flux-integrated cross section for charged-current muon neutrino induced 𝐾 + production on argon nuclei, determined to be 7.93 ± 3.22⁢(stat) ± 2.83⁢(syst)×10 −42 cm 2 /nucleon based on an analysis of 6.88 × 10 20 protons on target. This result was found to be consistent with model predictions from different neutrino event generators within the reported uncertainties.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Real-Time Anomaly Detection for Charge-Based Triggering in LArTPCs

Modern particle detectors, including liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs), collect a vast amount of data, making it impractical to save everything for offline analysis. As a result, these experiments need to employ different down-selection techniques during data acquisition, referred to as triggering. In this talk, I will present a framework that would enable real-time, data-driven triggering for LArTPCs, using anomaly detection algorithms implemented on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Drawing on a study that makes use of collected charge data from the MicroBooNE LArTPC Public Dataset, I will discuss the overall performance of such algorithms and potential applications for future neutrino experiments.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Wire Plane Transparency: Commissioning the Time Projection Chambers for the Short-Baseline Near Detector

The Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) serves as the near detector for Fermilab's Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme. It is a 112-ton Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) designed to study neutrino-argon interactions and search for new physics phenomena such as sterile neutrinos. Situated just 110 m from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), SBND just began its first physics run and is expected to record over two million neutrino interactions annually. Commissioning the time projection chambers of SBND is crucial for optimising detector performance. Each of the two anodes is composed of three charge-sensing wire planes which detect drifting ionisation electrons from charged particles traversing the detector. The wire planes, arranged with different 2D orientations, facilitate the 3D reconstruction of neutrino interactions. Electron transport induces signals on the first two planes, with the signal being collected by the rear plane. The first two induction planes require transparency to ensure all drift electrons reach the collection plane. This transparency depends on the bias voltages applied to the wires and the spacing between them. Fine-tuning these bias voltages ensures the optimisation of wire plane transparency. In this poster, I will demonstrate how transparency can be assessed by analysing the waveforms from cosmic-ray muon tracks traversing the detector at specific orientations.

McCusker, Bethany [Unlisted, US]↗
DOE OSTI2025

Proper time observables of general gravitational perturbations in laser interferometry-based gravitational wave detectors

We present an explicitly gauge-invariant observable of any general gravitational perturbation, ℎ 𝜇⁢𝜈 [not necessarily due to gravitational waves (GWs)], in a laser interferometry-based GW detector, identifying the signature as the proper time elapsed of the beamsplitter observer, between two events: when a photon passes through the beamsplitter, and when the same photon returns to the beamsplitter after traveling through the interferometer arm and reflecting off the far mirror. Our formalism applies to simple Michelson interferometers and can be generalized to more advanced setups. We demonstrate that the proper time observable for a plane GW is equivalent to the detector strain commonly used by the GW community, though now the common framework can be easily generalized for other types of signals, such as dark matter clumps or spacetime fluctuations from quantum gravity. We provide a simple recipe for computing the proper time observable for a general metric perturbation in linearized gravity and explicitly show that it is invariant under diffeomorphisms of the perturbation, as any physical observable should be.

Dark matter detectors↗
DOE OSTI2026

SBND Shower Reconstruction with SPINE

The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) is a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detector in the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program at Fermilab. SBND is designed to investigate the Low-Energy Excess (LEE), an unexplained excess of electron-like events observed by previous short-baseline neutrino experiments that may point to physics beyond the Standard Model. In LArTPC detectors, precise shower reconstruction is essential for distinguishing electrons from photons, a key requirement for testing possible explanations of the LEE and improving $\nu_e$ event selection. In this poster, the reconstruction studies using the Scalable Particle Imaging with Neural Embeddings (SPINE), a machine learning based reconstruction framework for particle imaging detectors will be presented. SPINE combines sparse convolutional neural networks (CNN) and graph neural networks (GNN) to enable detailed reconstruction and characterization of neutrino interactions in LArTPC detectors. Shower calorimetry and kinematic reconstruction are performed in dedicated post-processing stages. Strong agreement between data and Monte Carlo simulation will be demonstrated, indicating high-precision detector calibration and reconstruction performance. The agreement between reconstructed and true electron shower energy will also be discussed, emphasizing the robustness of the shower reconstruction performance. These results demonstrate the unprecedented precision achievable with SPINE in SBND, highlighting their potential for future high-resolution neutrino measurements.

Fan, Castaly [Florida U.; Fermilab] (ORCID:0000000↗
DOE OSTI2025

Flow and thermal modelling of the argon volume in the DarkSide-20k TPC

The DarkSide-20k dark matter experiment, currently under construction at LNGS, features a dual-phase time projection chamber (TPC) with a ∼ 50 t argon target from an underground well. At this scale, it is crucial to optimise the argon flow pattern for efficient target purification and for fast distribution of internal gaseous calibration sources with lifetimes of the order of hours. To this end, we have performed computational fluid dynamics simulations and heat transfer calculations. The residence time distribution shows that the detector is well-mixed on time-scales of the turnover time (∼ 40 d). Notably, simulations show that despite a two-order-of-magnitude difference between the turnover time and the half-life of 83m Kr of 1.83 h, source atoms have the highest probability to reach the centre of the TPC 13 min after their injection, allowing for a homogeneous distribution before undergoing radioactive decay. We further analyse the thermal aspects of dual-phase operation and define the requirements for the formation of a stable gas pocket on top of the liquid. We find a best-estimate value for the heat transfer rate at the liquid-gas interface of 62 W with an upper limit of 144 W and a minimum gas pocket inlet temperature of 89 K to avoid condensation on the acrylic anode. This study also informs the placement of liquid inlets and outlets in the TPC. The presented techniques are widely applicable to other large-scale, noble-liquid detectors.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Solid, structured composite neutron detectors with high dynamic range capability

Neutron detectors are essential across disciplines such as fundamental science, nuclear security, safeguards, and civilian applications. While 3 He-filled gas proportional counters have long been revered for their efficacy in detecting thermal neutrons and praised for their efficiency, neutron/gamma discrimination, and stability, the scarcity of 3He has spurred a search for alternatives. Here, we explore a solid structured scintillating particle composite (SPC) consisting of 6 Li-containing scintillating glass particles within an acrylic matrix as a neutron detector for high dynamic range applications. We show for the first time that an SPC neutron detector can boast an intrinsic detection efficiency of 0.261% for pure 252 Cf fission neutrons and an overall neutron detection efficiency of (0.546 ± 0.003)% at the Neutron Free-in-Air facility while being able to function in an intense gamma-ray environment. We also show that the SPC neutron detector supports fast neutron capture times and enables a dual-readout scheme that extends the detector dynamic range to high incident neutron fluxes. A scalable fabrication process allows for tailoring the SPC detector properties to the requirements of specific applications. Good agreement is found between the experimental results taken with a National Institute of Standards and Technology traceable 252 Cf source and the coupled MCNP6 and optical-ray-tracing simulations.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

Fast and Accurate Pixel Calibration of Tof Neutron Diffractometers with Machine Learning

At a spallation neutron source, neutron pulses of varying energies are generated, and the detection of neutrons by instrument detectors is recorded as time-of-flight from the emission of the neutron pulse to its arrival at specific detector pixels with high time resolution. The flight path of neutrons from the moderator to the sample and then to the detector must be precisely calibrated at the detector-pixel level using standard powders, so the neutron events from all pixels can be time-focused to produce high-resolution diffraction patterns. Modern time-of-flight neutron diffractometers at spallation neutron sources are equipped with two-dimensional detectors with millimeter-scale pixelations. The number of pixels in a diffraction instrument can reach millions, which makes a single-pixel-level calibration process time-consuming or even impossible with conventional refinement or fitting approaches. Here we present a machine-learning-aided calibration process using a train-and-predict approach, in which machine learning models are trained on the relationship between an individual pixel time-of-flight diffraction pattern and its diffraction constant. These models use a portion of the available pixels for training, and a good model then predicts the diffraction constants precisely and rapidly for large sets of pixel diffraction patterns.

detector pixel calibration↗
DOE OSTI2022

Demonstration of <2 ns timing resolution for neutrino interaction in the MicroBooNE detector

The MicroBooNE detector, located in the Booster Neutrino Beamline (BNB) at Fermilab, collected data from 2015 to 2021. MicroBooNE’s Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber is accompanied by a Photon Detection System consisting of 32 PMTs used to measure the argon scintillation light and determine the timing of the neutrino interactions. This work employs improved analysis techniques combining light signals and reconstructed tracks achieving neutrino interaction timing resolution <2 ns. The result obtained allows MicroBooNE to access the 2 ns neutrino pulse structure of the BNB for the first time. The timing resolution achieved enables significant enhancement of cosmic background rejection for all neutrino analyses. Furthermore, the ns timing resolution opens the door for searching new long-lived-particles (e.g. Heavy Neutral Leptons, Higgs Portal Scalars) in MicroBooNE, as well in future large LArTPC experiments, namely SBN and DUNE.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗