| 1. |
- Cherkashyna, Nataliia, et al.
(författare)
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Benchmarking shielding simulations for an accelerator-driven spallation neutron source
- 2015
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Ingår i: Physical Review Special Topics. Accelerators and Beams. - 1098-4402. ; 18:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The shielding at an accelerator-driven spallation neutron facility plays a critical role in the performance of the neutron scattering instruments, the overall safety, and the total cost of the facility. Accurate simulation of shielding components is thus key for the design of upcoming facilities, such as the European Spallation Source (ESS), currently in construction in Lund, Sweden. In this paper, we present a comparative study between the measured and the simulated neutron background at the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source (SINQ), at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland. The measurements were carried out at several positions along the SINQ monolith wall with the neutron dosimeter WENDI-2, which has a well-characterized response up to 5 GeV. The simulations were performed using the Monte-Carlo radiation transport code Geant4, and include a complete transport from the proton beam to the measurement locations in a single calculation. An agreement between measurements and simulations is about a factor of 2 for the points where the measured radiation dose is above the background level, which is a satisfactory result for such simulations spanning many energy regimes, different physics processes and transport through several meters of shielding materials. The neutrons contributing to the radiation field emanating from the monolith were confirmed to originate from neutrons with energies above 1 MeV in the target region. The current work validates Geant4 as being well suited for deep-shielding calculations at accelerator-based spallation sources. We also extrapolate what the simulated flux levels might imply for short (several tens of meters) instruments at ESS.
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| 2. |
- Dijulio, Douglas D., et al.
(författare)
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Benchmarking Geant4 for spallation neutron source calculations
- 2016
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Ingår i: VI European Conference On Neutron Scattering (ECNS2015). - : IOP Publishing. ; 746:1
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Geant4 is becoming increasingly used for radiation transport simulations of spallation neutron sources and related components. Historically, the code has seen little usage in this field and it is of general interest to investigate the suitability of Geant4 for such applications. For this purpose, we carried out Geant4 calculations based on simple spallation source geometries and also with the the European Spallation Source Technical Design Report target and moderator configuration. The results are compared to calculations performed with the Monte Carlo N Particle extended code. The comparisons are carried out over the full spallation neutron source energy spectrum, from sub-eV energies up to thousands of MeV. Our preliminary results reveal that there is generally good agreement between the simulations using both codes. Additionally, we have also implemented a general weight-window generator for Geant4 based applications and present some results of the method applied to the ESS target model.
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| 3. |
- Dijulio, Douglas D., et al.
(författare)
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Characterization of the radiation background at the Spallation Neutron Source
- 2016
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Ingår i: VI European Conference On Neutron Scattering (ECNS2015). - : IOP Publishing. ; 746:1
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present a survey of the radiation background at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN, USA during routine daily operation. A broad range of detectors was used to characterize primarily the neutron and photon fields throughout the facility. These include a WENDI-2 extended range dosimeter, a thermoscientific NRD, an Arktis He-4 detector, and a standard Nal photon detector. The information gathered from the detectors was used to map out the neutron dose rates throughout the facility and also the neutron dose rate and flux profiles of several different beamlines. The survey provides detailed information useful for developing future shielding concepts at spallation neutron sources, such as the European Spallation Source (ESS), currently under construction in Lund, Sweden.
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| 4. |
- Gaffney, L. P., et al.
(författare)
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Collectivity in the light radon nuclei measured directly via Coulomb excitation
- 2015
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Ingår i: Physical Review C (Nuclear Physics). - 0556-2813. ; 91:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Shape coexistence in heavy nuclei poses a strong challenge to state-of-the-art nuclear models, where several competing shape minima are found close to the ground state. A classic region for investigating this phenomenon is in the region around Z = 82 and the neutron midshell at N = 104. Purpose: Evidence for shape coexistence has been inferred from a-decay measurements, laser spectroscopy, and in-beam measurements. While the latter allow the pattern of excited states and rotational band structures to be mapped out, a detailed understanding of shape coexistence can only come from measurements of electromagnetic matrix elements. Method: Secondary, radioactive ion beams of Rn-202 and Rn-204 were studied by means of low-energy Coulomb excitation at the REX-ISOLDE in CERN. Results: The electric-quadrupole (E2) matrix element connecting the ground state and first excited 2(1)(+) state was extracted for both Rn-202 and Rn-204, corresponding to B(E2; 2(1)(+) -> 0(1)(+)) = 29(-8)(+8) and 43(-12)(+17) W.u., respectively. Additionally, E2 matrix elements connecting the 2(1)(+) state with the 4(1)(+) and 2(2)(+) states were determined in Rn-202. No excited 0(+) states were observed in the current data set, possibly owing to a limited population of second-order processes at the currently available beam energies. Conclusions: The results are discussed in terms of collectivity and the deformation of both nuclei studied is deduced to be weak, as expected from the low-lying level-energy schemes. Comparisons are also made to state-of-the-art beyond-mean-field model calculations and the magnitude of the transitional quadrupole moments are well reproduced.
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| 5. |
- Reifarth, R., et al.
(författare)
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Nuclear astrophysics with radioactive ions at FAIR
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Physics: Conference Series. - : IOP Publishing. - 1742-6588 .- 1742-6596. ; 665:1
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The nucleosynthesis of elements beyond iron is dominated by neutron captures in the s and r processes. However, 32 stable, proton-rich isotopes cannot be formed during those processes, because they are shielded from the s-process flow and r-process beta-decay chains. These nuclei are attributed to the p and rp process. For all those processes, current research in nuclear astrophysics addresses the need for more precise reaction data involving radioactive isotopes. Depending on the particular reaction, direct or inverse kinematics, forward or time-reversed direction are investigated to determine or at least to constrain the desired reaction cross sections. The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will offer unique, unprecedented opportunities to investigate many of the important reactions. The high yield of radioactive isotopes, even far away from the valley of stability, allows the investigation of isotopes involved in processes as exotic as the r or rp processes.
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| 6. |
- Rodriguez, Damian, et al.
(författare)
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Systematic study on the performance of elliptic focusing neutron guides
- 2016
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Ingår i: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A. - : Elsevier BV. - 0168-9002 .- 1872-9576 .- 0167-5087. ; 808, s. 101-108
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In neutron scattering experiments there is an increasing trend towards the study of smaller volume samples, which make the use of focusing optics more important. Focusing guide geometries based on conic-sections, such as those with parabolic and elliptic shapes, have been extensively used in both recently built neutron instruments and upgrades of existing hardware. A large fraction of proposed instruments at the European Spallation Source feature the requirement of good performance when measuring on small samples. The optimised design of a focusing system comes after time consuming Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations. Therefore, in order to help reduce the time needed to design such focusing systems, it is necessary to study systematically the performance of focusing guides. In the present work, we perform a theoretical analysis of the focusing properties of neutron beams, and validate them using a combination of Monte-Carlo simulations and Particle Swarm Optimisations (PS0s), where there is a close correspondence between the maximum divergence of the beam and the shape of the guide. The analytical results show that two limits can be considered, which bound a range of conic section shapes that provide optimum performance. Finally, we analyse a more realistic guide example and we give an assessment of the importance of the contribution from multiple reflections in different systems.
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| 7. |
- Santoro, Valentina, et al.
(författare)
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MeV Neutron Production from Thermal Neutron Capture in 6Li Simulated With Geant4
- 2016
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Ingår i: VI European Conference On Neutron Scattering (ECNS2015). - : IOP Publishing. ; 746:1
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Various Li compounds are commonly used at neutron facilities as neutron absorbers. These compounds provide one of the highest ratios of neutron attenuation to gamma-ray production. Unfortunately, the usage of these compounds can also give rise to fast neutron emission with energies up to almost 16 MeV. Historically, some details in this fast neutron production mechanism can be absent from some modeling packages under some optimization scenarios. In this work, we tested Geant4 to assess the performance of this simulation toolkit for the fast neutron generation mechanism. We compare the results of simulations performed with Geant4 to available measurements. The outcome of our study shows that results of the Geant4 simulations are in good agreement with the available measurements for Li-6 fast neutron production, and suitable for neutron instrument background evaluation at spallation neutron sources.
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| 8. |
- Stenander, John, et al.
(författare)
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Application of automated weight windows to spallation neutron source shielding calculations using Geant4
- 2015
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Ingår i: Nuclear Instruments & Methods in Physics Research. Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors, and Associated Equipment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-5087 .- 0168-9002. ; 798, s. 167-171
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present an implementation of a general weight window generator for global variance reduction in Geant4 based applications. The implementation is flexible and can be easily adjusted to a user-defined model. In this work, the weight-window generator was applied to calculations based on an instrument shielding model of the European Spallation Source, which is currently under construction in Lund, Sweden. The results and performance of the implemented methods were evaluated through the definition of two figures of merit. It was found that the biased simulations showed an overall improvement in performance compared to the unbiased simulations. The present work demonstrates both the suitability of the generator method and Geant4 for these types of calculations. (C) 2015 Elsevier By. All rights reserved.
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