Generic guide concepts for the European Spallation Source

TL;DR

This paper proposes generic, cost-effective neutron guide concepts for the European Spallation Source, focusing on optimizing performance, safety, and alignment strategies to address technical challenges in high-power neutron beam transport.

Contribution

It introduces baseline guide geometries with cost-efficient shielding and discusses the impact of over-illumination for passive misalignment mitigation at ESS.

Findings

Guides avoid direct line of sight to reduce shielding costs.

Over-illumination can passively mitigate alignment losses if used sparingly.

Baseline standards for ESS instrument guide design are proposed.

Abstract

The construction of the European Spallation Source (ESS) faces many challenges from the neutron beam transport point of view: The spallation source is specified as being driven by a 5 MW beam of protons, each with 2 GeV energy, and yet the requirements in instrument background suppression relative to measured signal vary between 10$^{-6}$ and 10$^{-8}$. The energetic particles, particularly above 20 MeV, which are expected to be produced in abundance in the target, have to be filtered in order to make the beamlines safe, operational and provide good quality measurements with low background. We present generic neutron guides of short and medium length instruments which are optimized for good performance at minimal cost. Direct line of sight to the source is avoided twice, with either the first point out of line of sight or both being inside the bunker (20\,m) to minimize shielding costs. These guide geometries are regarded as a baseline to define standards for instruments to be constructed at ESS. They are used to find commonalities and develop principles and solutions for common problems. Lastly, we report the impact of employing the over-illumination concept to mitigate losses from random misalignment passively, and that over-illumination should be used sparingly in key locations to be effective. For more widespread alignment issues, a more direct, active approach is likely to be needed.