1. Design Studies Of A Pulsed Quasimonoenergetic 2-keV Neutron Source For Calibration Of Low Threshold Dark Matter Detectors
- Author
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Chaplinsky, L., Fiorucci, S., Fink, C. W., Garcia-Sciveres, M., Guo, W., Hertel, S. A., Wuko, J. K., Li, X., Lin, J., Mahapatra, R., Matava, W., McKinsey, D. N., Osterman, D. Z., Patel, P. K., Penning, B., Pinckney, H. D., Platt, M., Qi, Y., Reed, M., Rischbieter, G. R. C, Romani, R. K., Sorensen, P., Velan, V., Wang, G., Wang, Y., Watkins, S. L., and Williams, M. R.
- Subjects
Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors ,High Energy Physics - Experiment - Abstract
We describe design studies for a pulsed quasi-monoenergetic 2-keV neutron source for calibration of sub-keV nuclear recoils. Such a calibration is required for detectors sensitive to sub-GeV dark matter and also the coherent elastic scattering of reactor neutrinos. In our design, neutrons from a commercial deuterium-tritium generator are moderated to the keV scale and then filtered to the monoenergetic spectrum using a feature in the neutron cross section of scandium. In this approach, unmoderated high-energy neutrons form a challenging background, along with gammas from neutron capture in the moderator materials. We describe the optimization of the moderator+filter and shielding geometry, and find a geometry that in simulation achieves both the target neutron flux at 2 keV and subdominant rates of background interactions. Lastly, we describe a future path to lower-energy (few eV scale) calibrations using time-of-flight and sub-keV neutrons., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures
- Published
- 2024