Dresden 2013 – scientific programme

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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne

HK 45: Instrumentation

HK 45.1: Prize Talk

Tuesday, March 5, 2013, 16:45–17:00, HSZ-405

A new Design of a highly Segmented Neutron Detector — •Magdalena Rohrbeck — Universität Koblenz-Landau, Institut für Integrierte Naturwissenschaften - Physik, 56070 Koblenz, Germany — Laureate of the Georg-Simon-Ohm-Prize

Since neutrons carry no electric charge and therefore do not interact with matter by means of the Coulomb force, the detection of neutrons is particularly challenging. Progress in the development of neutron detectors is of great importance for neutron physics due to the poor data situation compared to experiments with protons. Disadvantages of previously used neutron detectors are their low detection efficiency and counting rate capability. The neutron detection efficiency of about 1 %/cm for typical plastic scintillators necessitates a high detector volume and the counting rate capability of applied photomultipliers of about 1 MHz limits the number of detectable events. Both the detector volume and the number of applied photomultipliers are mainly restricted by the available budget. A new design of a scintillation-based neutron detector is presented. Replacement of conventional photomultiplier tubes by low-prized silicon photon counters and usage of standardized components allow the development of a detector with a high volume and a high segmentation. Due to the planned volume of (0.96 m)³ a detection efficiency close to 100 % can be achieved, at the same time the counting rate load on each photon counter can be kept low because of the high segmentation with single modules with a squared diameter of 2 cm. The neutron detector will be integrated into the experimental setup of the A1 collaboration at MAMI, Mainz, and will e.g. enable precise determination of the neutron’s form factors.