Test of digital neutron-gamma discrimination with four different photomultiplier tubes for the NEutron Detector Array (NEDA)

作者：Luo, X L^*; Modamio, V; Nyberg, J; Valiente Dobon, J J; Nishada, Q; de Angelis, G; Agramunt, J; Egea, F J; Erduran, M N; Erturk, S; de France, G; Gadea, A; Gonzalez, V; Hueyuek, T; Jaworski, G; Moszynski, M; Di Nitto, A; Palacz, M; Soederstroem, P A; Sanchis, E; Triossi, A; Wadsworth, R

来源：Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment , 2014, 767: 83-91.

DOI：10.1016/j.nima.2014.08.023

• Digital neutron-gamma discrimination
• Liquid scintillator
• Photomultiplier tube
• Charge Comparison
• Integrated rise-time
• Time-of-flight
• NEDA

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.

• 出版日期2014-12-11
• 单位RIKEN; 中国人民解放军国防科学技术大学; 中国地震局