We have designed and tested a large-area (0.15~m2) neutron detector based on neutron capture on \ce{^{6}Li}. The neutron detector design has been optimized for the purpose of tagging the scattering angle of keV-scale neutrons. These neutron detectors would be employed to calibrate the low-energy (<100 eV) nuclear recoil in detectors for dark matter and coherent elastic neutrino nucleus scattering (CEνNS). We describe the design, construction, and characterization of a prototype. The prototype is designed to have a tagging efficiency of ∼25\% at the relevant O(keV) neutron energies, and with a mean capture time of ∼17μs. The prototype was characterized using a \ce{^{252}Cf} neutron source and agreement with the simulation was observed within a few percent level.
@article{arxiv.2203.04896,
title = {A backing detector for order-keV neutrons},
author = {A. Biekert and L. Chaplinsky and C. W. Fink and M. Garcia-Sciveres and W. C. Gillis and W. Guo and S. A. Hertel and G. Heuermann and X. Li and J. Lin and R. Mahapatra and D. N. McKinsey and P. K. Patel and B. Penning and H. D. Pinckney and M. Platt and M. Pyle and R. K. Romani and A. Serafin and R. J. Smith and B. Suerfu and V. Velan and G. Wang and Y. Wang and S. L. Watkins and M. R. William},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.04896},
year = {2022}
}