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At least 523 records · Page 29
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Structure studies of 13 Be from the 12 Be ⁢(𝑑,𝑝) reaction in inverse kinematics on a solid deuteron target

The low-lying structure of 13 Be has remained an enigma for decades. Despite numerous experimental and theoretical studies, large inconsistencies remain. Being both unbound and one neutron away from 14 Be, the heaviest bound beryllium nucleus, 13 Be is difficult to study through simple reactions with weak radioactive-ion beams or more complex reactions with stable-ion beams. Here, we present the results of a study using the 12 Be (𝑑,𝑝)⁢ 13 Be reaction in inverse kinematics using a 9.5 MeV per nucleon 12 Be beam from the ISAC-II facility. The solid deuteron target of IRIS was used to achieve an increased areal thickness compared to conventional deuterated polyethylene targets. The 𝑄-value spectrum below −4.4 MeV was analyzed using a Bayesian method with geant4 simulations. A three-point angular distribution with the same 𝑄-value gate was fit with a mixture of 𝑠- and 𝑝-wave, 𝑠- and 𝑑-wave, or pure 𝑝-wave transfer. The 𝑄-value spectrum was also compared with geant simulations obtained using the energies and widths of states reported in four previous works. As a result, it was found that our results are incompatible with works that revealed a wide 5/2 + resonance but shows better agreement with ones that reported a narrower width.

6 ≤ A ≤ 19↗
DOE OSTI2024

Effectiveness of denoising diffusion probabilistic models for fast and high-fidelity whole-event simulation in high-energy heavy-ion experiments

Artificial intelligence (AI) generative models, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), variational autoencoders, and normalizing flows, have been widely used and studied as efficient alternatives for traditional scientific simulations. However, they have several drawbacks, including training instability and inability to cover the entire data distribution, especially for regions where data are rare. This is particularly challenging for whole-event, full-detector simulations in high-energy heavy-ion experiments, such as sPHENIX at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and Large Hadron Collider experiments, where thousands of particles are produced per event and interact with the detector. This work investigates the effectiveness of denoising diffusion probabilistic models (DDPMs) as an AI-based generative surrogate model for the sPHENIX experiment that includes the heavy-ion event generation and response of the entire calorimeter stack. DDPM performance in sPHENIX simulation data is compared with a popular rival, GANs. Results show that both DDPMs and GANs can reproduce the data distribution where the examples are abundant (low-to-medium calorimeter energies). Nonetheless, DDPMs significantly outperform GANs, especially in high-energy regions where data are rare. Additionally, DDPMs exhibit superior stability compared to GANs. The results are consistent between both central and peripheral centrality heavy-ion collision events. Moreover, DDPMs offer a substantial speedup of approximately a factor of 100 compared to the traditional Geant4 simulation method.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2010

Measurements of forward proton production with incident protons and charged pions on nuclear targets at the CERN Proton Synchrotron

Measurements of the double-differential proton production cross-section d{sup 2{sigma}}/dpd{Omega} in the range of momentum 0.5 GeV/c{<=}p<8.0 GeV/c and angle 0.05 rad{<=}{theta}<0.25 rad in collisions of charged pions and protons on beryllium, carbon, aluminium, copper, tin, tantalum, and lead are presented. The data were taken with the large acceptance HARP detector in the T9 beam line of the CERN Proton Synchrotron. Incident particles were identified by an elaborate system of beam detectors and impinged on a target of 5% of a nuclear interaction length. The tracking and identification of the produced particles was performed using the forward spectrometer of the HARP experiment. Results are obtained for the double-differential cross-sections mainly at four incident beam momenta (3,5,8, and 12 GeV/c). Measurements are compared with predictions of the geant4 and mars Monte Carlo generators.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2010

Precision measurements of the {sup 60}Co {beta}-asymmetry parameter in search for tensor currents in weak interactions

The {beta}-asymmetry parameter A-tilde for the Gamow-Teller decay of {sup 60}Co was measured by polarizing the radioactive nuclei with the brute-force low-temperature nuclear-orientation method. The {sup 60}Co activity was cooled down to milliKelvin temperatures in a {sup 3}He-{sup 4}He dilution refrigerator in an external 13-T magnetic field. The {beta} particles were observed by a 500-{mu}m-thick Si PIN diode operating at a temperature of about 10 K in a magnetic field of 0.6 T. Extensive geant4 Monte Carlo simulations were performed to gain control over the systematic effects. Our result, A-tilde=-1.014(12){sub stat}(16){sub syst}, is in agreement with the standard-model value of -0.987(9), which includes recoil-order corrections that were addressed for the first time for this isotope. Further, it enables limits to be placed on possible tensor-type charged weak currents, as well as other physics beyond the standard model.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Low-lying states in Ra 219 and Rn 215 : Sampling microsecond α -decaying nuclei

Short-lived α-decaying nuclei “northeast” of 208 Pb in the chart of nuclides were studied using the reaction 48 Ca + 243 Am with the decay station TASISpec at TASCA, GSI Darmstadt. Here, the decay energies and times from pile-up events were extracted with a tailor-made pulse-shape analysis routine and specific α-decay chains were identified in a correlation analysis. Decay chains starting with the even-even 220 Ra and its odd- A neighbors, 219 Fr, and 221,219 Ra, with a focus on the 219 Ra → 215 Rn decay, were studied by means of α–γ spectroscopy. A revised α-decay scheme of 219 Ra is proposed, including a new decay branch from a previously not considered isomeric state at 17 keV excitation energy. Conclusions on nuclear structure are drawn from the experimental data, aided by Geant4 simulations and a discussion on theoretical calculations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays: Pathfinder experiment for a next-generation neutrino observatory

The Radar Echo Telescope for Cosmic Rays (RET-CR) is a recently funded experiment designed to detect the englacial cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower via in-ice radar, toward the goal of a full-scale, next-generation experiment to detect ultrahigh energy neutrinos in polar ice. For cosmic rays with a primary energy greater than 10 PeV, roughly 10% of an air shower’s energy reaches the surface of a high elevation ice sheet (≳2 ˙km) concentrated into a radius of roughly 10 cm. This penetrating shower core creates an in-ice cascade orders of magnitude more dense than the preceding in-air cascade. Additionally, this dense cascade can be detected via the radar echo technique, where transmitted radio waves are reflected from the ionization deposit left in the wake of the cascade. RET-CR will test the radar echo method in nature, with the in-ice cascade of a cosmic ray-initiated air shower serving as a test beam. In this work, we present the projected event rate and sensitivity based upon a three part simulation using corsika, geant4, and radioscatter. RET-CR expects ~1 radar echo event per day.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Ionization yield measurement in a germanium CDMSlite detector using photo-neutron sources

Two photo-neutron sources, Y 88 Be 9 and Sb 124 Be 9 , have been used to investigate the ionization yield of nuclear recoils in the CDMSlite germanium detectors by the SuperCDMS collaboration. In this study, we evaluate the yield for nuclear recoil energies between 1 and 7 keV at a temperature of ~ 50 mK . We use a geant4 simulation to model the neutron spectrum assuming a charge yield model that is a generalization of the standard Lindhard model and consists of two energy dependent parameters. We perform a likelihood analysis using the simulated neutron spectrum, modeled background, and experimental data to obtain the best fit values of the yield model. The ionization yield between recoil energies of 1 and 7 keV is shown to be significantly lower than predicted by the standard Lindhard model for germanium. There is a general lack of agreement among different experiments using a variety of techniques studying the low energy range of the nuclear recoil yield, which is most critical for interpretation of direct dark matter searches. This suggests complexity in the physical process that many direct detection experiments use to model their primary signal detection mechanism and highlights the need for further studies to clarify underlying systematic effects that have not been well understood up to this point.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Measurement of the π - -Ar total hadronic cross section at the LArIAT experiment

We present the first measurement of the negative pion total hadronic cross section on argon in a restricted phase space, which we performed at the Liquid Argon In A Testbeam (LArIAT) experiment. All hadronic reaction channels, as well as hadronic elastic interactions with scattering angle greater than 5° are included. The pions have kinetic energies in the range 100–700 MeV and are produced by a beam of charged particles impinging on a solid target at the Fermilab test beam facility. LArIAT employs a 0.24 ton active mass liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) to measure the pion hadronic interactions. For this measurement, LArIAT has developed the “thin slice method,” a new technique to measure cross sections with LArTPCs. While moderately higher, our measurement of the π - -Ar total hadronic cross section is generally in agreement with the geant4 prediction.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Fast and accurate simulations of calorimeter showers with normalizing flows

In this study, we introduce caloflow, a fast detector simulation framework based on normalizing flows. For the first time, we demonstrate that normalizing flows can reproduce many-channel calorimeter showers with extremely high fidelity, providing a fresh alternative to computationally expensive geant4 simulations, as well as other state-of-the-art fast simulation frameworks based on generative adversarial networks (GANs) or variational autoencoders (VAEs). In addition to the usual histograms of physical features and images of calorimeter showers, we introduce a new metric for judging the quality of generative modeling: the performance of a classifier trained to differentiate real from generated images. We show that GAN-generated images can be identified by the classifier with nearly 100% accuracy, while images generated from caloflow are better able to fool the classifier. More broadly, normalizing flows offer several advantages compared to other state-of-the-art approaches (GANs and VAEs), including tractable likelihoods, stable and convergent training, and principled model selection. Normalizing flows also provide a bijective mapping between data and the latent space, which could have other applications beyond simulation, for example, to detector unfolding.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Demonstration of new MeV-scale capabilities in large neutrino LArTPCs using ambient radiogenic and cosmogenic activity in MicroBooNE

Large neutrino liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) experiments can broaden their physics reach by reconstructing and interpreting MeV-scale energy depositions, or blips, present in their data. We demonstrate new calorimetric and particle discrimination capabilities at the MeV energy scale using reconstructed blips in data from the MicroBooNE LArTPC at Fermilab. We observe a concentration of low-energy (<3 MeV) blips around fiberglass mechanical support struts along the time projection chamber edges with energy spectrum features consistent with the Compton edge of 2.614 MeV 208 Tl decay 𝛾 rays. These features are used to verify proper calibration of electron energy scales in MicroBooNE’s data to few percent precision and to measure the specific activity of 208 Tl in the fiberglass composing these struts, (11.7 ± 0.2⁢(stat) ± 3.1⁢(syst)) Bq/kg. Cosmogenically produced blips above 3 MeV in reconstructed energy are used to showcase the ability of large LArTPCs to distinguish between low-energy proton and electron energy depositions. An enriched sample of low-energy protons selected using this new particle discrimination technique is found to be smaller in data than in dedicated corsika cosmic-ray simulations, suggesting either incorrect corsika modeling of incident cosmic fluxes or particle transport modeling issues in geant4.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Maximum Likelihood Analysis of Low Energy CDMS II Germanium Data

We report on the results of a search for a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) signal in low-energy data of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment using a maximum likelihood analysis. A background model is constructed using GEANT4 to simulate the surface-event background from Pb210decay-chain events, while using independent calibration data to model the gamma background. Fitting this background model to the data results in no statistically significant WIMP component. In addition, we also perform fits using an analytic ad hoc background model proposed by Collar and Fields, who claimed to find a large excess of signal-like events in our data. Finally, we confirm the strong preference for a signal hypothesis in their analysis under these assumptions, but excesses are observed in both single- and multiple-scatter events, which implies the signal is not caused by WIMPs, but rather reflects the inadequacy of their background model.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Measurements of Pion and Muon Nuclear Capture at Rest on Argon in the LArIAT Experiment

We report the measurement of the final-state products of negative pion and muon nuclear capture at rest on argon by the LArIAT experiment at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. We measure a population of isolated MeV-scale energy depositions, or blips, in 296 LArIAT events containing tracks from stopping low-momentum pions and muons. The average numbers of visible blips are measured to be 0.74 ± 0.19 and 1.86 ± 0.17 near muon and pion track endpoints, respectively. The 3.6⁢𝜎 statistically significant difference in blip content between muons and pions provides the first demonstration of a new method of pion-muon discrimination in neutrino liquid argon time projection chamber experiments. LArIAT Monte Carlo simulations predict substantially higher average blip counts for negative muon (1.22 ± 0.08) and pion (2.34 ± 0.09) nuclear captures. We attribute this difference to geant4’s inaccurate simulation of the nuclear capture process.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2011

Imaging pion showers with the CALICE analogue hadron calorimeter

The CALICE collaboration investigates different technology options for highly granular calorimeters for detectors at a future electron-positron collider. One of the devices constructed and tested by the collaboration is a 1 m{sup 3} prototype for an imaging scintillator-steel sampling calorimeter for hadrons with analogue readout (AHCAL). The light from 7608 small scintillator cells is detected with silicon photomultipliers. The AHCAL has been successfully operated during electron and hadron test-beam measurements at DESY, CERN, and Fermilab since 2005. The collected data allow for evaluating the novel technologies employed. In addition, these data provide a valuable basis for validating pion cascade simulations. This paper presents the current status of comparisons between the AHCAL data and predictions from different Monte Carlo models implemented in GEANT4. The comparisons cover the total visible energy, longitudinal and radial shower profiles, and the shower substructure. Furthermore, this paper discusses a software compensation algorithm for improving the energy resolution of the AHCAL for single pions. (authors)

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2011

Detection of thermal neutrons with a CMOS pixel sensor for a future dosemeter

The RaMsEs group (Radioprotection et Mesures Environnementales) is developing a new compact device for operational neutron dosimetry. The electronic part of the detector is made of an integrated active pixel sensor, originally designed for tracking in particle physics. This device has useful features for neutrons, such as high detection efficiency for charged particles, good radiation resistance, high readout speed, low power consumption and high rejection of photon background. A good response of the device to fast neutrons has already been demonstrated [1]. In order to test the sensibility of the detector to thermal neutrons, experiments have been carried out with a 512 x 512 pixel CMOS sensor on a californium source moderated with heavy water (Cf.D{sub 2}O) on the Van Gogh irradiator at the LMDN, IRSN, Cadarache (France)). A thin boron converter is used to benefit from the significant cross section of the {sup 10}B (n,{alpha}) {sup 7}Li reaction. Results show a high detection efficiency (around 10{sup -3}) of the device to thermal neutrons. Our measurements are in good agreement with GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations. (authors)

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2015

Test of a prototype neutron spectrometer based on diamond detectors in a fast reactor

A prototype of neutron spectrometer based on diamond detectors has been developed. This prototype consists of a {sup 6}Li neutron converter sandwiched between two CVD diamond crystals. The radiation hardness of the diamond crystals makes it suitable for applications in low power research reactors, while a low sensitivity to gamma rays and low leakage current of the detector permit to reach good energy resolution. A fast coincidence between two crystals is used to reject background. The detector was read out using two different electronic chains connected to it by a few meters of cable. The first chain was based on conventional charge-sensitive amplifiers, the other used a custom fast charge amplifier developed for this purpose. The prototype has been tested at various neutron sources and showed its practicability. In particular, the detector was calibrated in a TRIGA thermal reactor (LENA laboratory, University of Pavia) with neutron fluxes of 10{sup 8} n/cm{sup 2}s and at the 3 MeV D-D monochromatic neutron source named FNG (ENEA, Rome) with neutron fluxes of 10{sup 6} n/cm{sup 2}s. The neutron spectrum measurement was performed at the TAPIRO fast research reactor (ENEA, Casaccia) with fluxes of 10{sup 9} n/cm{sup 2}s. The obtained spectra were compared to Monte Carlo simulations, modeling detector response with MCNP and Geant4. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Comparison of simulated and experimentally measured detector impulse responses to pulsed x-rays

The Gamma Array Simulation Toolkit (GAST) is a multi-physics software stack comprised of Geant4, MATLAB, and experimentally measured photomultiplier tube (PMT) impulse response waveforms that is used to model and inform the end-toend performance of radiation detector systems. In order to validate the ability of GAST to predict the impulse response of a modeled detector configuration operated in current mode, experimental measurements using the Nevada National Security Site Transformational Diagnostics and Imaging 2 MeV endpoint energy electron linear accelerator (linac) with a tungsten target were performed. Seven different detector configurations consisting of unique combinations of scintillator material, size, reflectivity conditions, presence or absence of light guide, and PMT were evaluated. The resultant impulse response of each detector configuration was recorded and compared to a GAST simulation that emulated the respective linac experiment conditions. The comparison of the experimental and simulated detector impulse responses indicated that GAST can reliably predict detector impulse responses.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

Optimization Simulations for a Gamma-Ray Calibration Standard for a Cyclic Neutron Activation Analysis Pneumatic System at the Penn State Breazeale Reactor

For new experimental setups, the initial testing and calibrations can be expensive and time consuming without prior optimization. However, these issues can be mitigated using realistic modeling and simulation studies of the proposed system a priori. Specifically, an experiment can be performed virtually using realistic simulations and the expected results evaluated to inform adjustments of the experimental setup to achieve optimum results. At the Penn State Breazeale Reactor, a new pneumatic transfer system has been developed for the detection and characterization of short-lived fission fragments to enhance and complement existing nuclear data. The system accomplishes this task by transporting samples cyclically between an assortment of gamma-ray/neutron detectors and the reactor-core vicinity with sub-second transit times. The measured neutron flux paired with simulations of detector response using Geant4 and a custom module for estimating cascade summing effects and corrections were used to select sample-material masses for system characterization. With the optimized sample masses, an experimental counting plan for characterizing the repeatability of the newly developed pneumatic system was developed. Finally, the predictions made with these simulations allowed for optimization of the irradiation sample characteristics and gamma-ray detection system.

cyclic neutron activation, gamma-ray spectroscopy↗