Development of a gaseous proton-recoil detector for fission cross section measurements below 1 MeV neutron energy

Abstract

The elastic H(n,p) reaction is sometimes used to measure neutron flux, in order to produce high precision measurements. The use of this technique is not straightforward to use below incident neutron energy of 1 MeV, due to a high background in the detected proton spectrum. Experiments have been carried out at the AIFIRA facility to investigate such background and determine its origin and components. Based on these investigations, a gaseous proton-recoil detector has been designed, with a reduced low energy background.