NEXT Collaboration, Carcel, S., Carrion, J. V., Felkai, R., Kekic, M., Lopez-March, N., et al. (2020). Mitigation of backgrounds from cosmogenic Xe-137 in xenon gas experiments using He-3 neutron capture. J. Phys. G, 47(7), 075001–17pp.
Abstract: Xe-136 is used as the target medium for many experiments searching for 0 nu beta beta. Despite underground operation, cosmic muons that reach the laboratory can produce spallation neutrons causing activation of detector materials. A potential background that is difficult to veto using muon tagging comes in the form of Xe-137 created by the capture of neutrons on Xe-136. This isotope decays via beta decay with a half-life of 3.8 min and a Q(beta) of similar to 4.16 MeV. This work proposes and explores the concept of adding a small percentage of He-3 to xenon as a means to capture thermal neutrons and reduce the number of activations in the detector volume. When using this technique we find the contamination from Xe-137 activation can be reduced to negligible levels in tonne and multi-tonne scale high pressure gas xenon neutrinoless double beta decay experiments running at any depth in an underground laboratory.
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Jaworski, G., Palacz, M., Nyberg, J., de Angelis, G., de France, G., Di Nitto, A., et al. (2012). Monte Carlo simulation of a single detector unit for the neutron detector array NEDA. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 673, 64–72.
Abstract: A study of the dimensions and performance of a single detector of the future neutron detector array NEDA was performed by means of Monte Carlo simulations, using GEANT4. Two different liquid scintillators were evaluated: the hydrogen based BC501A and the deuterated BC537. The efficiency and the probability that one neutron will trigger a signal in more than one detector were investigated as a function of the detector size. The simulations were validated comparing the results to experimental measurements performed with two existing neutron detectors, with different geometries, based on the liquid scintillator BC501.
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Luo, X. L. et al, Agramunt, J., Egea, F. J., Gadea, A., & Huyuk, T. (2014). Test of digital neutron-gamma discrimination with four different photomultiplier tubes for the NEutron Detector Array (NEDA). Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 767, 83–91.
Abstract: A comparative study of the neutron-gamma discrimination performance of a liquid scintillator detector BC501A coupled to four different 5 in photomultiplier tubes (ET9390kb, R11833-100, XP4512 and R4144) was carried out Both the Charge Comparison method and the Integrated Rise-Time method were implemented digitally to discriminate between neutrons and gamma rays emitted by a Cf-252 source. In both methods, the neutron-gamma discrimination capabilities of the four photomultiplier tubes were quantitatively compared by evaluating their figure-of-merit values at different energy regions between 50 keVee and 1000 keVee. Additionally, the results were further verified qualitatively using time-of-flight to distinguish gamma rays and neutrons. The results consistently show that photomultiplier tubes R11833-100 and ET9390kb generally perform best regarding neutron-gamma discrimination with only slight differences in figure-of-merit values. This superiority can be explained by their relatively higher photoelectron yield, which indicates that a scintillator detector coupled to a photomultiplier tube with higher photoelectron yield tends to result in better neutron-gamma discrimination performance. The results of this work will provide reference for the choice of photomultiplier tubes for future neutron detector arrays like NEDA.
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Modamio, V., Valiente-Dobon, J. J., Jaworski, G., Huyuk, T., Triossi, A., Egea, J., et al. (2015). Digital pulse-timing technique for the neutron detector array NEDA. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 775, 71–76.
Abstract: A new digital pulse-timing algorithm, to be used with the future neutron detector array NEDA, has been developed and tested. The time resolution of four 5 in diameter photomultiplier tubes (XP4512, R4144, R11833-100, and ET9390-kb), coupled to a cylindrical 5 in by 5 in BC501A liquict scintillator detector was measured by employing digital sampling electronics and a constant fraction discriminator (CFD) algorithm. The zero crossing of the CM algorithm was obtained with a cubic spline interpolation, which was continuous up to the second derivative. The performance of the algorithm was studied at sampling rates of 500 MS/s and 200 MS/s. The time resolution obtained with the digital electronics was compared to the values acquired with a standard analog CFD. The result of this comparison shows that the time resolution from the analog and the digital measurements at 500 MS/s and at 200 MS/s are within 15% for all the tested photomultiplier tubes.
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Luo, X. L. et al, Agramunt, J., Egea, F. J., Gadea, A., & Huyuk, T. (2018). Pulse pile-up identification and reconstruction for liquid scintillator based neutron detectors. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 897, 59–65.
Abstract: The issue of pulse pile-up is frequently encountered in nuclear experiments involving high counting rates, which will distort the pulse shapes and the energy spectra. A digital method of off-line processing of pile-up pulses is presented. The pile-up pulses were firstly identified by detecting the downward-going zero-crossings in the first-order derivative of the original signal, and then the constituent pulses were reconstructed based on comparing the pile-up pulse with four models that are generated by combining pairs of neutron and.. standard pulses together with a controllable time interval. The accuracy of this method in resolving the pile-up events was investigated as a function of the time interval between two pulses constituting a pile-up event. The obtained results show that the method is capable of disentangling two pulses with a time interval among them down to 20 ns, as well as classifying them as neutrons or gamma rays. Furthermore, the error of reconstructing pile-up pulses could be kept below 6% when successive peaks were separated by more than 50 ns. By applying the method in a high counting rate of pile-up events measurement of the NEutron Detector Array (NEDA), it was empirically found that this method can reconstruct the pile-up pulses and perform neutron-gamma discrimination quite accurately. It can also significantly correct the distorted pulse height spectrum due to pile-up events.
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