Neutron response of the LAMBDA spectrometer and neutron interaction length in BaF2

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the neutron detection efficiency and interaction length in the LAMBDA spectrometer, comparing experimental results with simulations, and demonstrates its effectiveness in measuring neutron spectra and nuclear level density parameters.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed characterization of the neutron response of the LAMBDA spectrometer and validates its use for neutron detection in nuclear physics experiments.

Findings

Neutron detection efficiency measured using TOF agrees with GEANT4 simulations.

The average neutron interaction length in BaF2 was determined.

LAMBDA spectrometer's neutron measurements are consistent with traditional detectors.

Abstract

We report on the neutron response of the LAMBDA spectrometer developed earlier for high-energy gamma-ray measurement. The energy dependent neutron detection efficiency of the spectrometer has been measured using the time-of-flight (TOF) technique and compared with that of an organic liquid scintillator based neutron detector (BC501A). The extracted efficiencies have also been compared with those obtained from Monte Carlo GEANT4 simulation. We have also measured the average interaction length of neutrons in the BaF2 crystal in a separate experiment, in order to determine the TOF energy resolution. Finally, the LAMBDA spectrometer has been tested in an in-beam-experiment by measuring neutron energy spectra in the 4He + 93Nb reaction to extract nuclear level density parameters. Nuclear level density parameters obtained by the LAMBDA spectrometer were found to be consistent with those obtained by the BC501A neutron detector, indicating that the spectrometer can be efficiently used as a neutron detector to measure the nuclear level density parameter.