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National Bureau of Standards photoelectric and thermoelectric instrumentation for use in measurement of spectral irradiances of solar simulator
High Charge and Energy Semiempirical Nuclear Fragmentation Model (HZEFRG1) computer program developed to be computationally efficient, user-friendly, physics-based program for generating data bases on fragmentation of atomic nuclei. Data bases generated used in calculations pertaining to such radiation-transport applications as shielding against radiation in outer space, radiation dosimetry in outer space, cancer therapy in laboratories with beams of heavy ions, and simulation studies for designing detectors for experiments in nuclear physics. Provides cross sections for production of individual elements and isotopes in breakups of high-energy heavy ions by combined nuclear and Coulomb fields of interacting nuclei. Written in ANSI FORTRAN 77.
Coronagraphs for extra-solar planet detection remove diffracted stellar light through the combination of a coronagraphic mask and a Lyot stop. When the entrance pupil contains a nearly perfect wave fiont, most of the stellar light is absorbed at the mask. Light scattered around the spot due to mid- and high-spatial frequency phase errors in the pupil appears at the Lyot plane as speckles whose amplitudes are proportional to the local wave front phase residuals. The speckles scale with optical wavelength but are not radially smeared. The Eclipse deformable mirror (DM) can be used to modify the Lyot amplitude distribution, providing a simple means of estimating the residual phase content and controlling the wave front. To reduce the detrimental noise carried by uncontrollable high-spatial frequency wave front components, theLyot plane signal is filtered at the science plane to pass only the controllable spatial frequencies that contribute to the dark hole. The Lyot stop is then reimaged onto a detector. We demonstrate through simulations that this approach signiscantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the planet measurement.
The WFIRST Project is a joint effort between GSFC and JPL. The project scientists and engineers are working with the community Science Definition Team to define the requirements and initial design of the mission. The objective is to design an observatory that meets the WFIRST science goals of the Astr02010 Decadal Survey for minimum cost. This talk will be a report of recent project activities including requirements flowdown, detector array development, science simulations, mission costing and science outreach. Details of the interim mission design relevant to scientific capabilities will be presented.
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The next generation low-background detectors operating underground aim for unprecedented low levels of radioactive backgrounds. Although the radioactive decays of airborne radon (particularly {sup 222}Rn) and its subsequent progeny present in an experiment are potential backgrounds, also problematic is the deposition of radon progeny on detector materials. Exposure to radon at any stage of assembly of an experiment can result in surface contamination by progeny supported by the long half life (22 y) of {sup 210}Pb on sensitive locations of a detector. An understanding of the potential surface contamination from deposition will enable requirements of radon-reduced air and clean room environments for the assembly of low background experiments. It is known that there are a number of environmental factors that govern the deposition of progeny onto surfaces. However, existing models have not explored the impact of some environmental factors important for low background experiments. A test stand has been constructed to deposit radon progeny on various surfaces under a controlled environment in order to develop a deposition model. Results from this test stand and the resulting deposition model are presented.
This paper describes recent advances in Monte Carlo simulations of microchannel plate (MCP)–based x-ray detectors, a continuation of ongoing work in this area. A Monte Carlo simulation model has been developed over the past several years by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec). The model simulates the secondary electron emission process in an MCP pore and includes the effects of gain saturation. In this work we focus on MCP gain saturation and dynamic range. We have performed modeling and experimental characterizations of L/D = 46, 10-micron diameter, MCP-based detectors. The detectors are typically operated by applying a subnanosecond voltage pulse, which gates the detector on. Agreement between the simulations and experiment is very good for a variety of voltage pulse waveforms ranging in width from 150 to 300 ps. The results indicate that such an MCP begins to show nonlinear gain around 5 × 10^4 electrons per pore and hard saturation around 105 electrons per pore. The simulations show a difference in MCP sensitivity vs voltage for high flux of photons producing large numbers of photoelectrons on a subpicosecond timescale. Simulations and experiments both indicate an MCP dynamic range of 1 to 10,000, and the dynamic range depends on how the voltage is applied.
Digital Inject Book is a software program designed to generate and managed simulated data for radiation detectors, used to increase the realism of training where real radiation sources are impractical, expensive, or simply not available.
The validation of a reactor physics code system is an essential part of the code development process. It allows for the evaluation of the code's ability to predict and model the complex physical processes that take place in a nuclear reactor under various operational conditions. Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has been developing a set of reactor physics analysis tools within the MOOSE framework. MAMMOTH is the main reactor physics application, which integrates other MOOSE applications to solve complex multiphysics problems. Results from this study demonstrate that the MOOSE based reactor physics tools, currently under development at INL, have the flexibility to model with high accuracy the HZP condition for a standard PWR. The DRAGON5-Rattlesnake full core pin-cell homogenized simulation produces eigenvalues and detector signals that are comparable to those generated with OpenMC and nTRACER. However, many improvements are necessary to achieve higher fidelity results.
As the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program Far Detector, the ICARUS liquid argon time-projection chamber will operate at shallow depth and therefore be exposed to the full surface flux of cosmic rays. This poses a problematic background to the sterile neutrino search. A direct way to reject this background is to surround the cryostat with a detector capable of tagging incident cosmic muons with high efficiency, the Cosmic Ray Tagging System (CRT). I have worked to develop the CRT detector hardware and the simulation and reconstruction software. This system, currently undergoing installation, is approximately 25% commissioned and taking data. I have developed a powerful method for cosmogenic background rejection utilizing the CRT and Photon Detection System. Results from a simulation based study, informed by CRT data, demonstrate the power of the technique in rejecting cosmogenic events with little adverse impact on the neutrino sample.
Direct detection dark matter experiments are increasingly interested in the low-mass dark matter parameter space, but zero-background low-mass searches require event separation between the electron and nuclear recoil bands, which requires a proper understanding of detector energy reconstruction. Previous simulations have shown that we do not entirely understand the ionization efficiency (yield) for electron and nuclear recoils, as the assumption that the distribution for the yield is normally distributed for a true recoil energy is violated. Since the yield distribution may directly affect dark matter low-mass limits, it is crucial we understand how the yield is distributed. A component to understanding the yield distribution is the variance in the number of electron-hole pairs produced or ionization variance. This effect has been studied relatively infrequently as experiments have been interested in large energy deposits (10 - 100 keV) and could accurately separate electron and nuclear recoil events. For electron recoils, the ionization variance is described by a “Fano” factor. For nuclear recoils the effect can be parameterized by an “effective” Fano factor, which has similar definition but a different physical origin. The nuclear recoil “effective” Fano factor is shown to be much larger than the electron-recoil version above around 10 keV deposited energy.
Nuclear decommissioning is constrained and defined by radiation and radioactive contamination. Where radiation is high and its distribution is unknown simply gathering the data needed for project planning can become a challenge. Fukushima Daiichi epitomises this challenge. The complex sequence of events at the plant following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami has resulted in extensive physical damage and an essentially unpredictable distribution of contamination. TEPCO have applied a range of manual and robotics techniques to map the status of the plant, but many significant areas have remained no-go zones due to a combination of high radiation, physical hazards and obstacles. Further, even in areas where manual survey is feasible, there is strong desire to minimise human exposure to radiation by deploying robots where possible. Riser is a fully autonomous UAV equipped with an infrastructure-free 3D navigation and mapping system, inspection cameras and a CZT spectrometric measurement capability. The system has been custom designed specifically to meet the needs of the nuclear inspection. Riser is capable of accessing areas with dose rates of hundreds of milli-sievert per hour and producing 3D models and radiation surveys with accurately located data points. The data from Riser can subsequently be fused using Createc's N-Visage engine to produce three-dimensional contamination maps which can be used for predictive modelling of future D and D activity. Riser has been deployed at Fukushima Daiichi since March 2017. We present examples of data and analysis outputs, as well as general learning about deploying autonomous robots at a nuclear site. (authors)
3D gamma source mapping and intervention analysis, through Transco Products, Inc.'s RadVision3D{sup R}, uses the N-Visage Scanner{sup TM} by Createc combining laser scanning, optical imaging, and CZT (Cadmium Zinc Telluride) technologies to capture plant geometry, images, and gamma radiation data. By capturing multiple scans in an area of interest a full 3D analysis can be performed using N-Visage Fusion{sup TM} software by Createc which develops a 3D model showing radioactive sources in the environment and allowing various interventions, such as shielding or source removal, to be modeled virtually. The output of a RadVision3D{sup R} project is a scaled virtual environment that the user can 'walk through' on a PC for training and work planning activities. Included in the viewer are dose planes for the as-scanned conditions as well as for each intervention, showing the dose rate at any point in the room. A virtual dosimeter is built into the viewer to allow users to be fully immersed in the environment in which they will be working, without being exposed to actual radiation or other hazardous conditions. This technology can help save dose at operating nuclear power plants when used for planning large work scopes in high radiation areas and is valuable as a characterization tool for decommissioning facilities. Adopters of 3D gamma source mapping and intervention analysis save time, money, and dose by evaluating options well in advance of the performance of any work, and optimizing interventions using accurate modelling techniques to plan work evolutions. (author)
Over the past two decades, exceptional progress has been made providing coherent x-ray beams at both high-brightness synchrotron sources and x-ray free electron lasers (XFEL). The availability of these coherent x-rays has led to a surge in instruments that exploit x-ray coherence for either x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) or coherent diffraction imaging (CDI). A key to these techniques has been to resolve, or at least nearly resolve, the speckles associated with the scattering from structural disorder. Given practical limits on detector pixel size, this requires long sample-to-detector distances. This paper presents numerical simulations of an instrument that can efMiciently provide a long sample-detector distance while maintaining the ability to rapidly set momentum transfer by inserting crystals with different order in the incident beam, thus changing in incident direction instead of moving the detector.
This dissertation describes efforts towards understanding the Higgs boson at the highest energies humanly accessible, using the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). We present searches for resonant and nonresonant Higgs-boson (H) pair production in the all-hadronic two beauty-quark and two vector boson (V) final state, using a novel strategy to measure the quartic HHVV coupling and search for new Higgs-like bosons. By targeting highly Lorentz-boosted Higgs pairs, we probe effects of potential new physics in the high energy Higgs sector, which could hold answers to fundamental mysteries of nature such as baryon asymmetry. To enable these and future searches, we introduce as well significant developments in AI/ML, including in the identification of boosted H$\rightarrow$VV decays with deep transformer networks and advances in AI-accelerated fast simulations of the CMS detector. The latter notably includes the development of the first, highly performant generative models for point-cloud data in high energy physics, which have the potential to improve CMS' computational efficiency by up to three orders of magnitude. We also highlight novel solutions to the important and challenging problems of calibrating and validating these ML techniques. Finally, we present new approaches to search for new physics in a model-agnostic manner, using physics-informed ML methods equivariant to Lorentz transformations. The quartic HHVV coupling is observed (expected) to be constrained to $[-0.04, 2.05]$ ($[0.05, 1.98]$) at the 95% confidence level relative to the standard model prediction, representing the second-most sensitive measurement of this coupling by CMS to date. Exclusion limits on the production cross section of new heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs-like bosons are expected to be as low as 0.3 fb for high resonance masses.
The development and testing of a Faraday cup fast-ion loss detector capable of measuring sub 100 keV particles is documented. Such measurement capabilities play an important role in the assessment of particle confinement of nuclear fusion experiments. The detector is manufactured using thin-film deposition techniques, building upon previous work using discrete foils. This new manufacturing method allows the form factor of the sensor to become that of essentially a microchip. Analysis of the diagnostic response is performed using Monte-Carlo particle simulations. These simulations show peaks in the detector response at 40 and 70 keV. The sensor is then tested in a tunable linear accelerator capable of accelerating protons from 20 to 120 keV. Finally, the detector response was found to be well matched to simulations. Improvements to the design to facilitate robustness are discussed.
The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) was proposed as the next energy-frontier infrastructure at CERN, to study e ^+ + e ^- − collisions at three centre-of-mass energy stages: 380,GeV, 1.5,TeV and 3,TeV. The main goal of its high-energy stages is to search for the new physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The Inert Doublet Model (IDM) is one of the simplest SM extensions and introduces four new scalar particles: H ^\pm ± , A and H; the lightest, H, is stable and hence a natural dark matter (DM) candidate. A set of benchmark points is considered, which are consistent with current theoretical and experimental constraints and promise detectable signals at future colliders. Prospects for observing pair-production of the IDM scalars at CLIC were previously studied using signatures with two leptons in the final state. In the current study, discovery reach for the IDM charged scalar pair-production is considered for the semi-leptonic final state at the two high-energy CLIC stages. Full simulation analysis, based on the current CLIC detector model, is presented for five selected IDM scenarios. Results are then extended to the larger set of benchmarks using the Delphes fast simulation framework. The CLIC detector model for Delphes has been modified to take pile-up contribution from the beam-induced \gamma\gamma γ γ interactions into account, which is crucial for the presented analysis. Results of the study indicate that heavy, charged IDM scalars can be discovered at CLIC for most of the proposed benchmark scenarios, with very high statistical significance.
In a neutron-diagnosed subcritical experiment, a highly sensitive and fast detector is required to accurately determine the true fission γ-ray emission rate from an object composed of special nuclear material under interrogation, in addition to a proper detector response model for use in forward modeling. We present the development of a detector response model that is based in GEANT4 and uses post-processing techniques to include photomultiplier tube time and pulse height response effects. We also define a set of detector performance evaluation metrics that emphasized our experimental objectives. A suite of time and pulse height response measurements for several diverse detector assemblies are described. These assemblies were simulated with this response model and benchmarked against the laboratory measurements. This response model reproduces the pulse height curve shapes and performance hierarchy of the measured detectors well. Additionally, the simulated time response curves exhibit reasonable agreement with counterpart measurements. These measurements and simulation results together suggest that a large volume EJ-299-49 plastic scintillator that is mated to an ultraviolet transmitting plastic light guide and relies on total internal reflection for light transport to the photocathode will provide significantly faster timing, increase pulse height by a factor of 3, and require 25% less γ rays to meet experimental needs, compared to the candidate detector design developed prior to the availability of this response model. Application of this response model and associated performance metrics in the context of large-scale design sensitivity studies is also discussed.