The CLAS12 Central Neutron Detector

International audience; The Central Neutron Detector is a scintillator barrel that was designed to detect 0.2-1 GeV neutrons at lab polar angles from 40 ∘ to 120 ∘ in the CLAS12 spectrometer in Hall B at Jefferson Laboratory. The design is based on three radial layers of paddles read out at the upstream end of the barrel by photomultipliers tubes. Neighboring paddles in each layer are coupled together at the downstream end of the barrel by “U-turn” light guides. The components of this detector are presented and the performance of the detector with the first beam data taken by CLAS12 is reported.