Shielding Experiments Under JASMIN Collaboration at Fermilab(IV) - Measurement and Analyses of High-Energy Neutron Spectra in the Anti-Proton Target Station

TL;DR

This study measures high-energy neutron spectra in Fermilab's anti-proton target station using activation methods and compares results with simulations, demonstrating PHITS's effectiveness for shielding design.

Contribution

Introduces a new fitting method for neutron spectrum determination and validates PHITS simulations against experimental data.

Findings

PHITS accurately predicts neutron spectra in the 1-100 MeV range.

The new fitting method effectively determines neutron spectra from activation data.

Experimental results support PHITS's use in shielding design for high-energy accelerators.

Abstract

Neutron spectra in high-energy region between 1 and 100-MeV in the shield configuration of the anti-proton target station and a 120-GeV proton beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) were determined using the reaction rate data obtained with the multi-foil activation method. Two kinds of methods were employed for the determination of neutron spectra: one is the fitting method which is newly developed in this work, another is the unfolding method with SAND-II code. The calculations were performed using the PHITS. From the comparison between the calculated and experimental neutron spectra, it concluded that the PHITS can be used for shielding design of high-energy proton accelerators.