Comparison of Thermal Neutron Detection Efficiency of $^{6}$Li Scintillation Glass and $^{3}$He Gas Proportional Tube

TL;DR

This study compares the thermal neutron detection efficiency of $^{6}$Li scintillation glass and $^{3}$He gas proportional tubes using experimental measurements and GEANT4 simulations.

Contribution

It provides a direct comparison of $^{6}$Li scintillation glass and $^{3}$He tubes for thermal neutron detection, validated by experimental data and Monte Carlo modeling.

Findings

Both detectors show high neutron capture efficiency.

Experimental results agree with GEANT4 simulations.

The study offers insights into detector performance for neutron detection.

Abstract

We report on a comparison study of the $^{3}$He gas proportional tube and the $^{6}$Li incorporated scintillation glasses on thermal neutron detection efficiency. Both $^{3}$He and $^{6}$Li are used commonly for thermal neutron detection because of their high neutron capture absorption coefficient. By using a neutron source $^{252}$Cf and a paraffin moderator in an alignment system, we can get a small beam of thermal neutrons. A flash ADC is used to measure the thermal neutron spectrum of each detector, and the detected number of events is determined from the spectrum, then we can calculate the detection efficiency of different detectors. Meanwhile, the experiment have been modeled with GEANT4 to validate the results against the Monte Carlo simulation.