Cerium doped yttrium aluminum perovskite scintillator as an absolute ultracold neutron detector
The upcoming UCNProBe experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory will measure the beta decay rate of free neutrons with different systematic uncertainties than previous beam-based neutron lifetime experiments. We have tested a new 10B-coated Yttrium Aluminum Perovskite (YAP:Ce) scintillator and present its properties. The advantages of the YAP:Ce scintillator include its high Fermi potential, which reduces the probability for upscattering of ultracold neutrons (UCN), and its short decay time, which increases sensitivity at high counting rates. Birks' coefficient of YAP:Ce was measured to be (5.56-0.30+0.05)×10-4 cm/MeV. The loss of light due to the 120 nm 10B-coating was measured to be about 60%, and the loss of light from YAP:Ce due to transmission through a deuterated polystyrene scintillator was about 50%. The efficiency for neutron capture on the 10B coating was (86.8 ± 2.6)%, and a measurement using UCN showed that the YAP:Ce crystal counted 8%-28% more UCN compared to a ZnS:Ag screen. The difference may be due to the uneven coating of 10B on the rough surface of ZnS:Ag.
Authors
- R. W. Pattie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4368-4417)
- E. L. Renner
- M. Makela (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0592-3683)
- M. Blatnik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3496-0010)
- C. O’Shaughnessy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0428-7374)
- Daniel E. Hooks (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7253-6689)
- J. Surbrook (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3794-0269)
- A. T. Holley
- Z. Tang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7328-3086)
- A. S. C. Navazo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-2364)
- Marcos Martinez
- Steven Clayton (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1401-2761)
- Nick Floyd (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-1432-546X)
- T. M. Ito (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3494-6796)
- A. R. Young (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7326-7414)
- C. L. Morris (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2141-0255)
- C. B. Cude-Woods
- M. S. Singh (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2385-0492)
- C.-Y. Liu
- M. Krivoš
- Israel Martinez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6378-7099)
Institutions
- New Mexico State University (US)
- East Tennessee State University (US)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (US)
- North Carolina State University (US)
- University of Kentucky (US)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Tennessee Technological University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Review of Scientific Instruments
- Published
- 2024-10-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0211059
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.34
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Science
- Laboratory Directed Research and Development