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At least 1,351 records · Page 75
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Radiological Mapping of Nuclear Facilities

Identifying radiological abnormalities is critical during emergencies at nuclear facilities. This facilitates a necessity for the Emergency Management (EM) to map baseline radiation levels at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The INL uses scintillation detectors to measure radioactivity and gamma spectrums; but, because they are heavy and costly, these detectors can be impractical for mapping radiological areas. This presentation will establish initial radiological heat maps for emergencies and test the Radiacode-103G — a handheld scintillator with GPS and Bluetooth capability with a Gadolinium Aluminum Gallium Garnet (GAGG) crystal.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Lambda baryon production in neutrino-nucleus interactions and light signals reconstruction in the Short-Baseline Near Detector

The field of neutrino physics is nowadays entering the era of precision measurements, with new detectors capable of capturing neutrino interactions with unprecedented detail and high intensity neutrino beams. Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) have become one of the main neutrino detection technologies, providing excellent imaging capabilities and particle identification. The Short-Baseline Near Detector (SBND) at Fermilab is a LArTPC experiment designed to capture neutrinos from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB). Its proximity to the beam target (110\,m) and large size (112\,ton) enable the recording of millions of neutrino interactions annually. SBND provides the highest statistics worldwide for neutrino-argon cross-section measurements, facilitating the study of rare channels like Cabibbo-suppressed quasielastic hyperon production. Specifically, this thesis focuses on neutral $\Lambda$ baryon production for which only tens of events have been observed up to date. Our work introduces a novel selection strategy leveraging LArTPC imaging capabilities to identify the distinctive decay signatures of $\Lambda$ baryons, enhancing sensitivity to this channel. Besides being a very mature technology, LArTPCs are an evolving technology. Part of the focus of the new developments lies in harnessing the potential of scintillation light signals. The Photon Detection System (PDS) in SBND has been designed to provide an efficient detection of the scintillation light, representing a major R\&D opportunity in the LArTPC community. Its design provides a high and more uniform light yield, an excellent timing resolution and an independent 3D reconstruction of the events, including the drift coordinate, using exclusively the light signals. This work presents the first comprehensive study of the SBND PDS capabilities. The new developments in the simulation and reconstruction of the light signals in SBND are presented. The whole chain is applied to accurately tag neutrino events through timing information, with a predicted resolution $\mathcal{O}$(2\,ns), and ultimately retrieve the pulse structure of the BNB.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Nucleon Structure Studies at Jefferson Lab and the Electron Ion Collider

The research programs of Thomas Jefferson Laboratory (JLab) and the future Electron- Ion Collider (EIC) focus on one of the main goals of strong interaction studies : understanding the structure of nucleons in terms of the quarks and gluons composing them. Their structure is encoded in functions such as Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs), which describe how quarks and gluons’ transverse position and longitudinal momentum are distributed inside nucleons. GPDs allow to obtain three-dimensional pictures of nucleons and to understand some of their fundamental properties, such as their internal pressure or the emergence of their spin from the dynamics of the partons composing them. At JLab and the EIC, electron beams are used to probe nucleons. Measurement of reactions such as Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) allows access to GPDs. The first longitudinally polarized-target experiment of the CLAS12 program at Jlab took place in 2022-2023. Combining polarized electron beams and nucleon targets, this experiment offers unique access to observables that allow the measurement of different types of GPDs. In particular, the DVCS beam- and target-spin asymmetries for protons and neutrons in deuterium will be measured for the first time. They give access to kinds of GPDs that are still poorly known, and the comparison between proton and neutron data will allow the extraction of the flavor dependence of the structure of nucleons. Specific analysis methods have been implemented to work with a polarized nuclear target and are presented in this thesis. These methods allow to obtain preliminary results for the asymmetries, waiting for the complete statistics to be available. In the long term, the experimental program for the EIC has been established with a strong emphasis on the measurement of the structure of nucleons at high energy. Measurements of reactions such as DVCS impose strict requirements on the electromagnetic calorimeter that will allow to measure the energy of the scattered electrons and photons. This calorimeter, which is under development, will be based on scintillating crystals read by Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). A new type of glass-based scintillating material was tested, evaluating the possibilities to meet the technical requirements concerning their light yield and resistance to radiation damage in particular. Several models of SiPMs have been characterized, demonstrating they can operate over the vast energy range necessary to address the physics case at the EIC and providing guidelines for developing their readout electronics.

Pilleux, Noemie↗
DOE OSTI2025

Large Area Airborne Contamination Monitoring

The individual components of a Large Area Airborne Contamination Monitoring (LAACM) system have been demonstrated as functional and the concept of a low-cost, rapidly deployable, and rapidly expandable system has been validated. All components of a previously demonstrated system were re-evaluated. Based on this evaluation, recommendations were made for air collection equipment, scintillating material was synthesized and optimized for application, and improved images were acquired. A preliminary concept of operations was developed, outlining the need for an automated scintillation application system and software for data acquisition and analysis. The work conducted under this program in FY24 has raised the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of the LAACM from TRL 3 to TRL 4.

Whiteside, Tad S. [Savannah River National Laborat↗
DOE OSTI2025

A High-Precision, Fast, Robust, and Cost-Effective Muon Detector Concept for the FCC-ee

We propose a high-precision, fast, robust and cost-effective muon detector concept for an FCC-ee experiment. This design combines precision drift tubes with fast plastic scintillator strips to enable both spatial and timing measurements. The drift tubes deliver two-dimensional position measurements perpendicular to the tubes with a resolution around 100~$\mu$m. Meanwhile, the scintillator strips, read out with the wavelength-shifting fibers and silicon photomultipliers, provide fast timing information with a precision of 200~ps or better and measure the third coordinate along the tubes with a resolution of about 1~mm.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Studies of time resolution, light yield, and crosstalk using SiPM-on-tile calorimetry for the future Electron-Ion Collider

We recently proposed a high-granularity calorimeter insert for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) that is based on plastic scintillator tiles readout with silicon photomultipliers. In this work, we concretize its design by characterizing its building blocks with measurements of light yield, optical crosstalk, and timing resolutions using cosmic-rays, an LED, and a beta source. We also compared two approaches for the optical isolation of cells: "megatiles" with grooved boundaries between cells, and a 3D-printed plastic frame hosting individual cells. Further, we found that the latter suppresses optical crosstalk to negligible levels while providing an easier assembly method. Overall, these performance studies can help inform calorimeter design and realistic simulations of 5D showers (time, energy, position) for the EIC and other experiments.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Operation and performance of a dual-phase crystalline/vapor xenon time projection chamber

We have built and operated a crystalline/vapor xenon TPC, with the goal of improving searches for dark matter. The motivation for this instrument is the fact that beta decays from the radon decay chain to the ground state presently limit the state-of-the-art liquid/vapor xenon experiments. In contrast, a crystalline xenon target has the potential to exclude, or tag and reject radon-chain backgrounds. As a preamble to demonstrating such capabilities, the present article makes a first demonstration of the operation of a crystalline/vapor xenon TPC with electroluminescence (gas gain) for the electron signal readout. It also shows that the scintillation yield in crystalline xenon appears to be identical to that in liquid xenon, in contrast to previous results.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

First-ever deployment of a SiPM-on-tile calorimeter in a collider: a parasitic test with 200 GeV p p collisions at RHIC.

We describe the testing of a prototype SiPM-on-tile iron-scintillator calorimeter at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) during its 200 GeV p p run in 2024. The prototype, measuring 20 × 20 cm 2 and 24 radiation lengths in depth, was positioned in the STAR experimental hall, approximately 8 m from the interaction point and 65 cm from the beam line, covering a pseudorapidity range of about 3.1 < η < 3.4. By using the dark current of a reference SiPM as a radiation monitor, we estimate that the prototype was exposed to a fluence of about 10 10 1-MeV n eq /cm 2 . Channel-by-channel calibration was performed in a data-driven way with the signature from minimum-ionizing particles during beam-on conditions. AGeant4 detector simulation, with inputs from thePythia8 event generator, describes measurements of energy spectra and hit multiplicities reasonably well. These results mark the first deployment, commissioning, calibration, and long-term operation of a SiPM-on-tile calorimeter in a collider environment. This experimental campaign will guide detector designs and operational strategies for the ePIC detector at the future EIC, as well as other applications.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

The STAR event plane detector

The Event Plane Detector (EPD) is an upgrade detector to the STAR experiment at RHIC, designed to measure the pattern of forward-going charged particles emitted in a high-energy collision between heavy nuclei. It consists of two highly-segmented disks of 1.2-cm-thick scintillator embedded with wavelength-shifting fiber, coupled to silicon photomultipliers and custom electronics. Finally, we describe the general design of the device, its construction, and performance on the bench and in the experiment.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Low energy neutron light output characterization of EJ301D and deuterated stilbene with a comparison of light output characterization methods

The neutron-induced light yield of a 2.54 cm diameter by 2.54 cm long right circular cylinder of EJ301D and a (5.08 cm)3 custom made cube of deuterated trans-stilbene-d12 (d-stilbene) were measured over incident neutron energies from 300 keV to 2.2 MeV and 200 keV to 2.4 MeV, respectively. The measurements were performed using a time-of-flight experiment with a Cf-252 source and an approximately 1.5 m flight path. We compare three light output spectrum full energy deposition edge estimation methods: (1) simulating the neutron energy spectrum edge and fitting it to the light output spectrum, (2) using the inflection point of the light output spectrum edge (derivative method, a.k.a. Kornilov’s method), and (3) using an empirical model fit to the edge of the light output spectrum. Both the derivative and equation fit methods do not account for physical processes such as multiple neutron scattering in the detectors. They instead rely on assumptions about the linear shape continuum shape of the light output spectrum and the direct correlation between the location of the spectrum’s inflection point and maximum energy deposition. These assumptions were found to introduce bias into those methods when tested against simulated spectra with known edge locations. When tested against measured spectra the derivative method was found to differ from the simulation fit by greater than 30% at low energies with large discontinuities for adjacent data points above 800 keV incident neutron energy. The empirical equation fitting method was found to also exhibit bias of a similar magnitude, but with significantly more continuous behavior, especially with the lower count data of the smaller volumed EJ301D scintillator. Experimental light output yield for this neutron energy range is reported using the simulated spectrum fitting method because it includes physics neglected by the other methods, and did not exhibit the bias observed in the other methods

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

The ScIDEP muon radiography project at the Egyptian Pyramid of Khafre

The ScIDEP Collaboration is constructing muon telescopes based on scintillator technology to investigate the internal structure of the Egyptian Pyramid of Khafre at Giza near Cairo using cosmic-ray muons. The collaboration aims to scan the pyramid from multiple viewpoints, both inside the king’s burial chamber that is located centrally at the base of the pyramid, and outside of the pyramid, to potentially identify any new internal structures. An overview of the project is presented, including the development of the data-acquisition system, the simulation framework, and very first detector studies.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Simulations of the nEDM@SNS light collection system efficiency

Here, a system for collecting the scintillation light produced by the capture of ultra-cold neutrons (UCN) on polarized 3 He is discussed and results from simulations of its performance are presented. This system will be implemented in nEDM@SNS, the experiment searching for the neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Simulation results show that the light collection system detects on average 17 photoelectrons per UCN- 3 He capture event (sufficient to generate a robust signal), reconstructs the event location in the beam direction to approximately 3 cm accuracy, detects capture events with a high and spatially uniform efficiency (0.95 with 1% variation), and rejects greater than 50% of beta decay background events.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2023

Performance of the wavelength-shifting fiber upgrade for the Mu2e cosmic-ray veto detector

The Cosmic-Ray Veto detector for the muon-to-electron conversion experiment at Fermilab consists of four plastic scintillating counter layers read out by silicon photo-multipliers through embedded wavelength-shifting fibers. In order to increase the light yield in the most critical regions of the Cosmic-Ray Veto detector for improved background rejection, a 1.8 mm diameter fiber is being used in many of the detector's critical modules instead of the previously planned 1.4 mm diameter fiber. This paper reports the testing procedure and light properties of thirty-four 1.8 mm fiber spools, with measurements performed using a custom-built scanner. We compare these new results with previously published data from the 1.4 mm diameter fiber used for regions of the cosmic-ray veto where the increased light yield is not required. In addition, measurements of fiber aging were performed.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

A first test of CUPID prototypal light detectors with NTD-Ge sensors in a pulse-tube cryostat

CUPID is a next-generation bolometric experiment aiming at searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay with ~250 kg of isotopic mass of 100 Mo. It will operate at ~10 mK in a cryostat currently hosting a similar-scale bolometric array for the CUORE experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy). CUPID will be based on large-volume scintillating bolometers consisting of 100 Mo-enriched Li 2 MoO 4 crystals, facing thin Ge-wafer-based bolometric light detectors. In the CUPID design, the detector structure is novel and needs to be validated. In particular, the CUORE cryostat presents a high level of mechanical vibrations due to the use of pulse tubes and the effect of vibrations on the detector performance must be investigated. In this paper we report the first test of the CUPID-design bolometric light detectors with NTD-Ge sensors in a dilution refrigerator equipped with a pulse tube in an above-ground lab. Light detectors are characterized in terms of sensitivity, energy resolution, pulse time constants, and noise power spectrum. Despite the challenging noisy environment due to pulse-tube-induced vibrations, we demonstrate that all the four tested light detectors comply with the CUPID goal in terms of intrinsic energy resolution of 100 eV RMS baseline noise. Indeed, we have measured 70–90 eV RMS for the four devices, which show an excellent reproducibility. We have also obtained high energy resolutions at the 356 keV line from a 133 Ba source, as good as Ge semiconductor γ detectors in this energy range.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Why would you put a flashlight in a dark matter detector?

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are solid-state, single-photon sensitive, pixelated sensors whose usage for scintillation detection has rapidly increased over the past decade. It is known that the avalanche process within the device, which renders a single photon detectable, can also generate secondary photons which may be detected by a separate device. This effect, known as external crosstalk, could potentially degrade the science goals of future xenon dark matter experiments. In this article, we measure the effect of external crosstalk in a dual-phase, liquid xenon time projection chamber fully instrumented with SiPMs. We then consider the implications for a future xenon dark matter experiment utilizing SiPMs and discuss possible solutions.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Operation of the trigger system for the ICARUS detector at Fermilab

The ICARUS liquid argon TPC detector is taking data on the Booster (BNB) and Main Injector (NuMI) Neutrino beam lines at Fermilab with a trigger system based on the scintillation light produced by charged particles in coincidence with the proton beam extraction from the accelerators. The architecture and the deployment of the trigger system in the first two runs for physics are presented, as well as the triggered event rates. The event recognition efficiency has been evaluated as a function of the deposited energy and the position of cosmic muons stopping inside the detector.

Neutrino detectors↗
DOE OSTI2020

Estimation of 14 MeV neutron rate from triton burn-up in future W7-X deuterium plasma campaigns

Fast ion confinement is of major importance for the ignition of a burning fusion plasma. In future deuterium plasma campaigns of the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, W7-X, the amount of triton burn-up is one possible measure for fast ion confinement. A well-established technique to observe triton burn-up is the 14 MeV neutron rate. In this paper, it is estimated whether an existing scintillating fibre neutron detector is also suited to measure triton burn-up in W7-X with sufficient accuracy. In this work, an estimation is presented, which can be applied to any tokamak or stellarator design and is one-dimensional in the minor radius. The inputs are profiles of density, temperature, and differential volume element as well as the triton slowing-down time. The estimation calculates the thermal deuteron fusion rate and the associated deuteron-triton fusion rate; thus, the triton burn-up generated 14 MeV neutron rate. It neither takes triton diffusion nor explicit losses into account. This thermally generated fusion rate is compared to the neutral beam injection heating induced beam-plasma fusion rate.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Demonstration of 151 Sm analysis using Trinity nuclear debris samples

Here, the long-lived fission product 151 Sm (T 1/2 ≈ 90 y) present in archived dissolved Trinity nuclear test debris samples was analyzed using liquid scintillation counting and the results were compared to the expected values based upon historical analysis results. The measured 151 Sm activities were found to agree with the expected values within experimental error. This demonstration validates the use of this technique in situations where the sample is too old for traditional shorter half-life radioactive fission product signatures such as 99 Mo (T 1/2 = 2.75 d), 97 Zr (T 1/2 = 16.7 h), 147 Nd (T 1/2 = 10.98 d), and 153 Sm (T 1/2 = 46.3 h), or too dilute for determining fissions through stable isotope ratio measurements.

151Sm↗