A new photonuclear thermal neutron facility has been developed at the Physics Department of University of Torino. The facility is based on a medical electron LINAC coupled to a compact converter and moderator assembly. A homogenous thermal neutron field of the order of 106 cm−2s−1 is achievable in the enclosed irradiation cavity with low gamma and fast neutron contaminations. Its intensity can be tuned varying the LINAC current. These characteristics make the source appropriate for several applications like detectors development, material studies and BNCT preclinical research. This work describes the project and the experimental characterization of the facility. This includes the measurement of the thermal neutron fluence rate, the determination of the neutron energy spectrum and of the thermal neutron field uniformity and the evaluation of the gamma contamination.
@article{arxiv.1909.00762,
title = {The e_LiBANS facility: a new compact thermal neutron source based on a medical electron LINAC},
author = {Valeria Monti and Marco Costa and Elisabetta Durisi and Ettore Mafucci and Luca Menzio and Oriol Sans-Planell and Lorenzo Visca and Roberto Bedogni and Matteo Treccani and Andrea Pola and Davide Bortot and Katia Alikaniotis and Gianrossano Giannini and Jose Maria Gomez-Ros},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.00762},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
15 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A (2019)