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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

DUNE and MINERvA Flux Studies and a Measurement of the Charged-Current Quasielastic Antineutrino Scattering Cross Section with $<E_{\nu}> \sim 6 $ GeV on a CH Target

One of the biggest open questions in physics is the prevalence of matter over anti-matter in the present universe. One of possible answers lies in the violation of charge and parity symmetry in the lepton sector that would favor matter over anti-matter so that the universe becomes dominated by matter over time. Recent results from neutrino experiments like T2K and NOvA have indicated that there is CP violation in the leptonic sector \citep{Abe:2019vii}. However, the precise measurement of CP violation will require an unprecedented level of accuracy in these oscillation experiments. One of the challenges lies with the systematic uncertainties that come with the measurements, which include uncertainties related to the neutrino flux modeling, interaction modeling and detector related systematic uncertainties.\\ The first part of this thesis will go through the challenges related to flux uncertainties. It will discuss the flux uncertainties related to hadron production in the LBN F beamli ne for the DUNE experiment. Hadron production models used in flux simulations vary widely depending on the simulation and choice of physics models used to simulate the hadron production. This thesis will explain the method of using existing hadron production data to constrain these uncertainties, a method which has been used in MINERvA experiment.\\ The second part of the thesis goes through the effect of possible flux mismodeling and MINERvA's approach to address this effect. In doing so, we discovered that the suspected mismodeling could also result from incorrect estimation of the energy scale of the muons. This project not only demonstrated the challenges of flux modeling but also led to a novel approach of using neutrino energy spectra to understand the correlation between detector and neutrino beamline parameters. \\ A high statistics measurement of the anti-neutrino scattering cross section in the charged current quasielastic (CCQE) channel is the final part of the th esis. Th e 2-body interactions in this channel have the advantage of allowing reconstruction of the interaction kinematics from the outgoing muon trajectory which can be measured very well. Double differential cross sections as a function of muon kinematics, one of the deliverables of this analysis, will help future oscillation experiments understand their data. The cross-section as a function of the four-momentum transferred from the leptonic system to the hadronic system ($Q^{2}_{QE}$) can be used to test models used in simulating antineutrino interactions and the nuclear effects that can modify the predicted cross sections. Nuclear effects arise from the complex nuclear environment and both modify the initial scattering and change the fate of the particles produced from in neutrino-nucleus interactions. Study of nuclear effects will help to understand the structure of the atomic nucleus and its impact on neutrino interactions.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Feasibility study of a compact neutron resonance transmission analysis instrument

Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) uses resonant absorption of neutrons to infer the absolute isotopic composition of a target object, enabling applications in a broad range of fields such as archaeology, enrichment analysis of nuclear fuel, and arms control treaty verification. In the past, NRTA involved large user facilities and complex detector systems. However, recent advances in the intensity of compact neutron sources have made compact neutron imaging designs increasingly feasible. This work describes the Monte Carlo (MC) based design of a compact epithermal NRTA radiographic instrument which uses a moderated, compact deuterium-tritium (DT) neutron source and an epithermal neutron detector. Such an instrument would have a wide range of applications, and would be especially impactful for such scenarios as nuclear inspection and arms control verification exercises, where system complexity and mobility may be of critical importance. The MC simulations presented in this work demonstrate accurate time-of-flight (TOF) reconstructions for transmitted neutron energies, capable of differentiating isotopic compositions of nuclear material with high levels of accuracy. A new generation of miniaturized and increasingly more intense neutron sources will allow this technique to achieve measurements with greater precision and speed, with significant impact on a variety of engineering and societal problems.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
NASA NTRS2007

Binary Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

The final merger of two black holes releases a tremendous amount of energy, more than the combined light from all the stars in the visible universe. This energy is emitted in the form of gravitational waves, and observing these sources with gravitational wave detectors such as LIGO and LISA requires that we know the pattern or fingerprint of the radiation emitted. Since black hole mergers take place in regions of extreme gravitational fields, we need to solve Einstein's equations of general relativity on a computer in order to calculate these wave patterns. For more than 30 years, scientists have tried to compute these wave patterns. However, their computer codes have been plagued by problems that caused them to crash. This situation has changed dramatically in the past 2 years, with a series of amazing breakthroughs. This discussion examines these gravitational patterns, showing how a spacetime is constructed on a computer to build a simulation laboratory for binary black hole mergers. The focus is on recent advances that are revealing these waveforms, and the dramatic new potential for discoveries that arises when these sources will be observed by the space-based gravitational wave detector LISA.

Centrella, Joan↗
DOE OSTI2025

The "Fake" Supernova Neutrinos of SBND: Using Muons Decaying at Rest to Study the Charged Current MeV-Scale $V_e$-Ar Cross Section

In a Type-II core collapse supernova, 99% of the total amount of energy is released in the form of neutrinos. However, the nearest supernova explosion in the last few hundred years was in 1987, over thirty years ago. It was also the first from which particle detectors around the world managed to detect the neutrino flux, yielding important information about their properties and the explosion mechanism. Neutrinos are the most weakly interacting subatomic fundamental particles known to date, and they act as a cooling mechanism for the star. Out of the six neutrino flavours currently known, the majority exiting the explosion are electron neutrinos, ve. Neutrino experiments using liquid argon (LAr) as their detector medium are unique at probing this specific channel. In the meantime, however, until the next explosion, we can still practise for the big event. With the Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) experiment at Fermilab, we can study how electron neutrinos of the same energy coming from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) interact in LAr, and measure the cross section. As BNB measurements are mostly tailored to higher energy neutrinos, I will present an overview of how SBND is aiming to select the low-energy neutrino candidates from muons Decaying At Rest (DAR) in the absorber and target within the BNB beam pipe. This is not a straightforward feat, encompassing special difficulties that include beam and flux systematic uncertainty simulation, system trigger needs and particular reconstruction efforts, and so I will present how each challenge is being addressed in SBND. This will be a novel measurement in the neutrino particle physics community, and will prove fundamental for the next generation of supernova neutrino detectors.

Kotsiopoulou, Lucy [Edinburgh U.]↗
DOE OSTI2026

Photon temporal-mode readout for inference of neutron star merger remnant gravitational waves

Gravitational waves emitted after neutron star binary coalescences and the information they carry about dense matter are a high-priority target for next-generation detectors. Even though such detectors are expected to observe millions of signals, detectable postmerger emission will remain rare. Here, in this work, we explore postmerger detectability and inference through an alternative detector readout scheme for data dominated by quantum-noise, which is the case above 1 kHz; photon-counting. In such a readout, signals and noise become quantized into discrete distributions corresponding to the detection of single photons measured in a chosen basis of modes. Through simulated data, we demonstrate that photon counting can be efficient even for weak signals. We find ∼1 in 100 signals with a postmerger signal-to-noise ratio of 0.2 can result in a single photon and thus be detected. Furthermore, after 2 ×10 4 signals—equivalent to 10 −2 to 1.5 years of observation—photon counting results in a twofold improvement in the measurement of the radius of a 1.6⁢𝑀 ⊙ neutron star. Constraints can be further tightened if the detector classical noise is reduced. Photon counting offers a promising alternative to traditional homodyne readout techniques for extracting information from low signal-to-noise ratio postmerger signals.

gravitational wave detection↗
DOE OSTI2022

Argonne Pixel Tracking Telescope at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility

The Argonne Pixel Tracking Telescope is installed at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. The telescope consists of six planar n + -in-n silicon sensors with a pixel size of 250 × 50 μm 2 . The instrumentation of the telescope is described including the electrical and mechanical setups. A 120 GeV proton beam is used to evaluate the telescope performance using criteria such as cluster size, pixel tracking efficiency, and spatial resolution. The spatial resolution of the telescope is measured to be 72 μm × 13 μm and is consistent with the resolution determined from the simulation. In conclusion, this telescope will be used to test the performance of the various silicon pixel technology as well as to study the effects and the performance of the detectors after being irradiated.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2026

Associated Particle Imaging of Neutron Inelastic Scatter: 3-D Reconstruction, Capabilities, and Challenges

Associated particle imaging (API) offers unique advantages for 3-D imaging of neutron inelastic scatter, including single-view tomographic imaging and data acquisition when access is limited to only one side of the interrogated object. However, widespread adoption of neutron inelastic scatter imaging has been impeded by several inherent challenges, most prominently spatial resolution, self-attenuation, and statistical noise. Here, in this work, the capabilities and challenges of neutron inelastic scatter imaging are investigated. Instead of focusing on a single imaging application, we identify imaging principles that hold for various neutron inelastic scatter imaging techniques. The primary challenges for 3-D imaging are characterized. The inherent spatial resolution in the time-of-flight (TOF) dimension is derived based on the known system timing resolution and scan geometry. Three reconstruction algorithms are described and demonstrated, including the introduction of modern iterative reconstruction incorporating a physics-based system model. Simulation is leveraged to demonstrate imaging capability with varying coincidence count levels and system timing resolution. An example of measured data with both back-scatter and forward-scatter detector positioning is presented. System design characteristics and their effects on image quality are identified. The imaging framework presented in this article has the potential to facilitate growth of 3-D neutron inelastic scatter API by identifying applications that are a good match for the technique and by targeting system development resources toward the requirements of a specific imaging task.

Associated particle imaging (API)↗
NASA NTRS1972

Optical properties of materials at low temperature and their application to optical detection

A lumped model to represent the photodielectric effect is developed. An analog simulation for a sample in a microwave cavity with a static magnetic field is developed. A system to measure continuously the PDE is analyzed. A performance factor to compared PD detectors versus ac photoconductors is computed. The operating conditions are defined for the appropriate noise conditions. The detectivity of the detector is found to be limited by the semiconductor sample noise.

Hartwig, W. H.↗
NASA NTRS1978

An instrument to measure the spectrum of cosmic ray iron and other nuclei to above 100 GeV-nucleon

A balloon-borne detector system for extending the study of cosmic ray composition to the energy region beyond 100 GeV/nucleon is described. The instrument incorporates an ionization calorimeter and a gas Cherenkov counter filled with freon for the determination of energies, and a charge module, consisting of scintillation and a lucite Cherenkov counter, for determining the charge of the incoming particle. The scintillators were utilized to determine the position of the incoming particle in addition to its charge. The characteristics of these detectors with respect to resolution, and the methods employed in laboratory calibration, cross-checks with flight data and actual performance in the flights are described in detail. Monte Carlo simulation of the ionization calorimeter and comparison of the response of the calorimeter and gas Cherenkov counter for complex nuclei was used to convert the observed calorimeter signal to absolute energy in a consistent manner.

Arens, J. F.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Comparison of 2- and 10-micron coherent Doppler lidar performance

The performance of 2- and 10-micron coherent Doppler lidar is presented in terms of the statistical distribution of the maximum-likelihood velocity estimator from simulations for fixed range resolution and fixed velocity search space as a function of the number of coherent photoelectrons per estimate. The wavelength dependence of the aerosol backscatter coefficient, the detector quantum efficiency, and the atmospheric extinction produce a simple shift of the performance curves. Results are presented for a typical boundary layer measurement and a space-based measurement for two regimes: the pulse-dominated regime where the signal statistics are determined by the transmitted pulse, and the atmospheric-dominated regime where the signal statistics are determined by the velocity fluctuations over the range gate. The optimal choice of wavelength depends on the problem under consideration.

Frehlich, Rod↗
NASA NTRS2002

Charge Sharing and Charge Loss in a Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride Fine-Pixel Detector Array

Because of its high atomic number, room temperature operation, low noise, and high spatial resolution a Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CZT) multi-pixel detector is ideal for hard x-ray astrophysical observation. As part of on-going research at MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center) to develop multi-pixel CdZnTe detectors for this purpose, we have measured charge sharing and charge loss for a 4x4 (750micron pitch), lmm thick pixel array and modeled these results using a Monte-Carlo simulation. This model was then used to predict the amount of charge sharing for a much finer pixel array (with a 300micron pitch). Future work will enable us to compare the simulated results for the finer array to measured values.

Gaskin, J. A.↗
NASA NTRS2013

NASA Tech Briefs, December 2013

Topics include: Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detector With; Selective Polarization Coupling; Flexible Microstrip Circuits for; Superconducting Electronics; CFD Extraction Tool for TecPlot From DPLR Solutions; RECOVIR Software for Identifying Viruses; Enhanced Contact Graph Routing (ECGR) MACHETE Simulation Model; Orbital Debris Engineering Model (ORDEM) v.3; Scatter-Reducing Sounding Filtration Using a Genetic Algorithm and Mean Monthly Standard Deviation; Thermo-Mechanical Methodology for Stabilizing Shape Memory Alloy Response; Hermetic Seal Designs for Sample Return Sample Tubes; Silicon Alignment Pins: An Easy Way To Realize a Wafer-to-Wafer Alignment; Positive-Buoyancy Rover for Under Ice Mobility; Electric Machine With Boosted Inductance to Stabilize Current Control; International Space Station-Based Electromagnetic Launcher for Space Science Payloads; Advanced Hybrid Spacesuit Concept Featuring Integrated Open Loop and Closed Loop Ventilation Systems; Data Quality Screening Service.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2020

Neutral Pion Electroproduction and development of a Neutral Particle Spectrometer

Protons and neutrons, i.e. nucleons, are the basic building blocks of the matter in the visible universe. The strong force binds the nucleons to form nuclei. The electromagnetic force forms the atoms by binding the electrons with the nuclei. The electromagnetic interaction is well understood by Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), which shows the most precise predictability amongst all the theories in physics. In QED, charges interact with each other by exchanging photons. The Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) describes the strong interaction. Its degrees of freedom are quarks and gluons, the fundamental constituents of the nucleons. The quarks interact with each other by exchanging gluons. However, unlike QED, the gluons interact amongst themselves. This feature of self bindings of the gluons confines the quarks and gluons in the nucleons/hadrons, never to be seen as free. In order to study some of the features of QCD, such as confinement or the structure of the nucleon, one usually needs to rely on experiments. Electromagnetic probes, governed by the well-understood QED, are excellent tools to probe the nucleon. In general, different scales, e.g. electron beam energies, probe different regions of the nucleon. At low energy, of the order of a few GeV, the electron probes the nucleon in the valence quark region. As its energy increases, the electron probes the sea quark and gluon regions. The study of the nucleon structure in all these regions is needed to fully understand QCD. Form factors and parton distribution functions measured from elastic scattering and deep inelastic scattering of leptons off nucleons have provided a partial view of the internal structure of the nucleon. In the mid-1990s, Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) were developed. These new objects are a generalization of the form factors and parton distribution functions, but contain richer information on the nucleon internal structure. GPDs are accessible experimentally by deep exclusive reactions. Deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) and deeply virtual meson production (DVMP) are some examples. The first dedicated DVCS/DVMP experiment took place in 2004 in Hall A at The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, i.e. Jefferson Lab, in Virginia, U.S.A. A new DVCS/DVMP experiment, after the beam energy upgrade of Jefferson Lab, was carried out in Hall A in a wider kinematic range. Its data were taken from 2014 to 2016. In Hall C at Jefferson Lab, the next DVCS/DVMP experiment will take place. The Hall C experiment will further exploit the kinematic range with higher precision. A Neutral Particle Spectrometer (NPS) is in development to measure DVCS/DVMP events under high background conditions. Jefferson Lab will provide the highest precision data in the valence quark region for various exclusive reactions. The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) is a future experimental facility currently planned to start operations around 2030 in the U.S.A. Its high energy and high luminosity will probe the sea quark and gluon regions providing answers to the outstanding questions of QCD, in particular in the region where matter is dominated by gluons. First of all, this document describes the data analysis and results of the Hall A neutral pion electroproduction off the proton, from the data taken in 2014-2016. Later, some of the developments towards the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the NPS for the upcoming DVCS/DVMP experiment in Hall C are presented. Finally, one of the candidate materials for the EIC calorimeter, a glass scintillator, will be briefly introduced. I have participated to all these projects, in collaboration with many colleagues. I present in this thesis my contributions to each of these projects. My contributions to the neutral pion data analysis were focused on background subtractions on the calorimeter, acceptance calculations, and the estimation of the systematic uncertainty associated to the event selection cuts. Some necessary information on calibrations of the detectors and data analysis methods are also described. In the NPS project, I performed background dose calculations and energy and position resolution studies of the calorimeter, all using Monte Carlo simulations, with realistic geometries of the experimental apparatus. Characterization of the crystals of the calorimeter was also done. Additionally, I measured the radiation hardness of some glass scintillator in its early stage of development. In order to have a future reference when the glass calorimeter prototype will be tested, I simulated the energy resolution of the prototype.

Ko, Ho-San↗
DOE OSTI2020

NDX: Neutron Dose Rate Meters with Extended Capabilities

Particle accelerators, irradiation facilities, and nuclear power plants would benefit from using neutron dose rate meters featuring improved energy response covering full range of expected neutron energies, improved dynamic range of measured dose rates while providing the real-time data, and improved ability to operate in harsh radiation environments including heavy photon backgrounds and pulsed beams. The novel design of the neutron moderator for the NDX dose rate meter implements a layer of a Beryllium-loaded medium Z material which, similar to the earlier known WENDI detectors, allows the device to detect higher energy neutron flux and convert it to dose. Using Beryllium helps to fill the known dip in the response functions around 5-50 MeV. Optimized design parameter set, obtained using FLUKA Monte Carlo simulations, features the NDX moderator made of polyethylene embedding a layer of BeCu alloy inside, with the dose rate response constant within ±10% in the neutron energy range from about 100 keV to 500 MeV, and ±25% essentially in the full energy range above thermal. A new sensor technique implemented in the NDX is based on using the Ionization Chamber (IC) filled with 3He gas to capture the moderated neutron fluence, and includes a symmetric IC filled with regular 4He to evaluate the contributions due to the non-neutron ionizing radiation. Advantages of the method include large accessible dynamic range, relative insensitivity of the IC probes to photon radiation fields, and the ability to subtract their contribution. Two prototype NDX detectors were built, calibrated, and operated in various conditions at the CEBAF 12 GeV electron accelerator at JLab. The first results showed reliable neutron dose rate measurements in the presence of overwhelming photon radiation fields, and at practical high dose rate levels of up to approximately 10 Sv/h. Detector design, operation, first results, and further development plans are presented.

Degtiarenko, Pavel V.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulating energetic particle losses in JET plasmas with a reverse integration biasing scheme

We report that an integrated energetic particle transport model has been constructed in JET plasmas constrained by experimental fast ion loss measurements. The model incorporates a synthetic fast ion loss detector identical to JET’s thin-foil Faraday cup fast ion loss detector array. The loss model combines analyses from the TRANSP and ORBIT-kick codes with enhanced features for producing the synthetic diagnostic. Extensions to the ORBIT code framework allow a full-orbit representation within the vacuum region that can map particles directly to an installed detector geometry. Since synthetic fast ion loss detectors are plagued by weak loss statistics, a novel reverse integration biasing scheme has been implemented to boost computational efficiency. The model is validated against experimental loss measurements induced by long-lived kink modes and is found to be in good agreement. This confirms the development of a fully integrated transport/loss model which can be quantitatively verified against experiment allowing for future validation and predictive studies. The model is particularly useful for more complicated plasma scenarios that involve multiple fast ion species such as JET’s 2021 DT-campaign.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS2003

Comparison of Measured and Simulated Albedo Signals in the ATIC Experiment

Albedo, radiation backscattered from an interaction and from the subsequent shower development, provides a 'background' for calorimeter experiments. In ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter), a balloon borne instrument to measure cosmic ray composition and energy spectra for elements from hydrogen to iron from 30 GeV to near 100 TeV, a fully active BGO calorimeter follows a carbon interaction target and scintillator holdoscopes. The first detector is a silicon matrix constructed of 4480 individual silicon pixels, each 2 cm x 1.5 cm, that provide a measurement of the charge of the primary particle in the presence of albedo. ATIC had two successful balloon flights in Antarctica: from 28 Dec 2000 to 13 Jan 2001 (ATIC-1) and from 29 Dec 2002 to 18 Jan 2003 (ATIC-2). A comparison of albedo signals in the silicon matri:x in ATIC-1 experiment with simulations performed using the GEANT 3.21 code and the QGSM event generator for nucleus-nucleus interactions is presented.

Zatsepin, V. I.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Measurement of space charge effects in the MicroBooNE LArTPC using cosmic muons

Large liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs), especially those operating near the surface, are susceptible to space charge effects. In the context of LArTPCs, the space charge effect is the build-up of slow-moving positive ions in the detector primarily due to ionization from cosmic rays, leading to a distortion of the electric field within the detector. This effect leads to a displacement in the reconstructed position of signal ionization electrons in LArTPC detectors ("spatial distortions"), as well as to variations in the amount of electron-ion recombination experienced by ionization throughout the volume of the TPC. We present techniques that can be used to measure and correct for space charge effects in large LArTPCs by making use of cosmic muons, including the use of track pairs to unambiguously pin down spatial distortions in three dimensions. Finally, the performance of these calibration techniques are studied using both Monte Carlo simulation and MicroBooNE data, utilizing a UV laser system as a means to estimate the systematic bias associated with the calibration methodology.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Nonlinear light-output calibration of the oxygenated xylene scintillators used in OMEGA neutron time-of-flight spectrometers

Neutron time-of-flight (nTOF) spectrometers are essential instruments for measuring and evaluating the performance of inertial confinement fusion implosions. The neutron spectrometers utilized for the OMEGA laser include two liquid-based scintillators, each consisting of a large volume filled with xylene that is coupled to four photomultiplier tubes. Analysis of the signal from these detectors requires detailed knowledge of the scintillator’s light output, which is needed to fit the nTOF spectrum, from which the neutron energy spectrum is informed. The light output is nonlinearly proportional to the neutron energy, which, in turn, affects the interpretation of the neutron energy spectrum from a TOF signal. A recent campaign on OMEGA was performed to calibrate the xylene detectors and infer the shape of the light-output curve. The campaign utilized materials with increasing Z placed in the OMEGA target chamber to initiate scattering events with the 14 MeV fusion neutrons. This process leads to the production of backscatter neutrons of varying energies that appear as peaks in the nTOF data. Simulations using a neutron transport code were combined with the measured deuterium–tritium neutron yields to calculate the expected backscattered neutron yields from the well-known scattering cross sections of each material. Furthermore, the neutron-energy dependent light output of the scintillator inferred from the experiment is compared to the light-output curve simulated with a neutron transport code for the following neutron energies: 1.5, 2.5, 6, and 14 MeV.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗