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EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik
EP 3: Poster session
EP 3.6: Poster
Tuesday, March 31, 2020, 16:30–18:30, Zelt
Thermal Atmospheric Neutron Observation System — •Friederike Schattke, Marc Hansen, Lisa Romaneehsen, Jonas Zumkeller, Patrick Pohland, Bernd Heber, Henning Lohf, Stephan Böttcher, and Patrick Kühl — Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Abteilung Extraterrestrische Physik, Deutschland
The Earth is continuously exposed to high energy charged particles from galactic cosmic rays. Due to galactic cosmic rays interacting with atmospheric particles, secondary neutrons are generated. Those are moderated to thermal energies below 0.025 eV through elastic scattering with water particles. This means thermal neutrons indicate the presence of water in the nearby area. As our earth contains a lot if it, we expect to be able to measure thermal neutrons in our atmosphere, thus it is the perfect place to test different detector layouts. The main objective of the Thermal Atmospheric Neutron Observation System (TANOS) is to measure the flux of thermal neutrons in the stratosphere. In order to measure these low energy neutrons we make use of the internal conversion electrons resulting from thermal neutron capture in Gadolinium. Gadolinium is particularly suitable for the experiment due to its high cross section of 49.000 barn. In the atmosphere we expect a radiation field consisting of charged and neutral particles. The flux of secondary particles is the largest at a height of about 20 km, the so called Pfotzer maximum. To characterize this height dependency of the radiation field, TANOS also measures the flux of charged particles.