PT Journal
AU Luo, XLea
   Agramunt, J
   Egea, FJ
   Gadea, A
   Huyuk, T
TI Test of digital neutron-gamma discrimination with four different photomultiplier tubes for the NEutron Detector Array (NEDA)
SO Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research A
JI Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A
PY 2014
BP 83
EP 91
VL 767
DI 10.1016/j.nima.2014.08.023
LA English
DE Digital neutron-gamma discrimination; Liquid scintillator; Photomultiplier tube; Charge Comparison; Integrated rise-time; Time-of-flight; NEDA
AB 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.
ER