Abstract
Fast neutrons are one of the major contributors to the background in a rare event search experiment performed at underground laboratory. An energy-calibrated scintillation detector can be used to understand the fast neutron background in an experimental site. However, it is hard to calibrate the neutron energy in such detectors due to the lack of mono-energetic neutron sources. Unfolding the detector’s response to neutrons gives way out to this problem even if the spectrum is continuous. In this work, we have simulated an EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector, obtained the detector response to standard gamma and neutron sources, and reconstructed the known Am-Be neutron spectrum using unfolding methods. We see a good agreement between the simulated and experimental gamma responses. The unfolded neutron spectra are consistent and match well with the input International Organization for Standardization (ISO) spectrum.
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Acknowledgements
The work has been carried out in the NISER neutron detector laboratory which has been set up by the support of DAE-India through the project Research in Basic Sciences—Dark Matter and SERB DST-India through the J. C. Bose Fellowship.
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Das, S., Kashyap, V.K.S., Mohanty, B. (2023). Simulating Response of a Liquid Scintillation Detector to Gamma and Neutrons. In: Patra, R.N. (eds) Advanced Radiation Detector and Instrumentation in Nuclear and Particle Physics . RAPID 2021. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 282. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19268-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19268-5_7
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