Improvement of energy resolution in time-of-flight method for high energy neutron measurement

In the time-of-flight measurement of high energy neutrons, the time resolution is often required to be as good as possible. For improvement of the energy resolution, the time-of-flight study was made by the use of Li (p, n) reaction at forward angles. Two types of detectors were tested. One was a liquid organic scintillator NE-213 5 inches (127 mm) in diameter and 127 mm thick connected with three Hamamatsu H2431 photomultipliers 2 inches (51 mm) in diameter. The other was NE-213 of the same size with a Hamamatsu R1250 127 mm in diameter. The experiment was made at π2 beam line of 12 GeV proton synchrotron in High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK). The incident proton energy was 800 MeV, and the flight path was 5 m. Two neutron detectors were set at 0 and 5 degrees, respectively. The time resolutions for prompt gamma rays were 0.5 ns for NE-213 with three H2431s and 1.0 ns for NE-213 with R1250. The energy resolutions for 800 MeV neutrons were derived from these values were 70 and 100 MeV, respectively.