Pulse Shape Discrimination of Fast Neutron Background using Convolutional Neural Network for NEOS II
NEOS II Collaboration, Y. Jeong, B. Y. Han, E. J. Jeon, H. S. Jo, D. K. Kim, J. Y. Kim, J. G. Kim, Y. D. Kim, Y. J. Ko, H. M. Lee, M. H. Lee, J. Lee, C. S. Moon… 展开作者
NEOS II Collaboration, Y. Jeong, B. Y. Han, E. J. Jeon, H. S. Jo, D. K. Kim, J. Y. Kim, J. G. Kim, Y. D. Kim, Y. J. Ko, H. M. Lee, M. H. Lee, J. Lee, C. S. Moon, Y. M. Oh, H. K. Park, K. S. Park, S. H. Seo, K. Siyeon, G. M. Sun, Y. S. Yoon, I. Yu
Pulse shape discrimination plays a key role in improving the signal-to-background ratio in NEOS analysis by removing fast neutrons. Identifying particles by looking at the tail of the waveform has been an effective and plausible approach for pulse shape discrimination, but has the limitation in sorting low energy particles. As a good alternative, the convolutional neural network can scan the entire waveform as they are to recognize the characteristics of the pulse and perform shape classification of NEOS data. This network provides a powerful identification tool for all energy ranges and helps to search unprecedented phenomena of low-energy, a few MeV or less, neutrinos.
The fast neutron rate is measured at the site of NEOS experiment, a short baseline neutrino experiment located in a tendon gallery of a commercial nuclear power plant, using a 0.78-liter liquid scintillator detector. A pulse shape discrimination technique is used to identify neutron signals. The measurements are performed during the nuclear reactor-on and off periods and found to be ~20 per day for both periods. The fast neutron rate is also measured at an overground site with a negligible overburden and is found to be ~100 times higher than that at the NEOS experiment site.
This paper describes the implementation and performance of CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination for the Belle II electromagnetic calorimeter, representing the first application of CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination for particle identification at an electron-positron collider. The pulse shape characterization algorithms applied by the Belle II calorimeter are described. Control samples of $γ$, $μ^+$, $π^\pm$, $K^\pm$ and $p/\bar{p}$ are used to demonstrate the significant insight into the secondary particle composition of calorimeter clusters that is provided by CsI(Tl) pulse shape discrimination…
Pulse shape discrimination with pure CsI scintillators is investigated as a method for separating energy deposits by energetic neutrons and photons at particle physics experiments. Using neutron data collected near the European XFEL XS1 beam window the pulse shape discrimination capabilities of pure CsI are studied and compared to CsI(Tl) using near-identical detector setups, which were operated in parallel. The inelastic interactions of 100MeV neutrons are observed to produce a slower scintillation emission in pure CsI relative to energy deposits from cosmic muons. By employing a charge-ratio…
Superheated drop detector (SDD) consisting of drops of superheated liquid of halocarbon is irradiated to neutrons and gamma-rays from 252Cf fission neutron source and 137Cs gamma source separately. The analysis of pulse height of the signals in the neutron and gamma-ray sensitive temperature provides strong information on the identification of neutron and gamma-ray induced events.
Pulse shape discrimination using CsI(Tl) scintillators to perform neutral hadron particle identification is explored with emphasis towards application at high energy electron-positron collider experiments. Through the analysis of the pulse shape differences between scintillation pulses from photon and hadronic energy deposits using neutron and proton data collected at TRIUMF, it is shown that the pulse shape variations observed for hadrons can be modelled using a third scintillation component for CsI(Tl), in addition to the standard fast and slow components. Techniques for computing the hadron…
A successfull application of Geiger-mode multipixel avalanche diodes (GMAPDs) for pulse-shape discrimination in alpha-beta spectrometry using organic liquid scintillator is described in this paper. Efficient discrimination of alpha and beta components in the emission of radioactive isotopes is achieved for alpha energies above 0.3 MeV. The ultra-compact design of the scintillating detector helps to efficiently suppress cosmic-ray and ambient radiation background. This approach allows construction of hand-held robust devices for monitoring of radioactive contamination in various environmental c…
The SNO+ liquid scintillator experiment is under construction in the SNOLAB facility in Canada. The success of this experiment relies upon accurate characterization of the liquid scintillator, linear alkylbenzene (LAB). In this paper, scintillation decay times for alpha and electron excitations in LAB with 2 g/L PPO are presented for both oxygenated and deoxygenated solutions. While deoxygenation is expected to improve pulse shape discrimination in liquid scintillators, it is not commonly demonstrated in the literature. This paper shows that for linear alkylbenzene, deoxygenation improves disc…
Digital pulse shape discrimination has become readily available to distinguish nuclear recoil and electronic recoil events in scintillation detectors. We evaluate digital implementations of pulse shape discrimination algorithms discussed in the literature, namely the Charge Comparison Method, Pulse-Gradient Analysis, Fourier Series and Standard Event fitting. In addition, we present a novel algorithm based on a Laplace Transform. Instead of reducing the performance of these algorithms to a single Figure of Merit, we evaluate them as function of recoil energy. Specifically, using commercial EJ-…
A meter-long, 23-liter EJ-309 liquid scintillator detector has been constructed to study the light collection and pulse-shape discrimination performance of elongated scintillator cells for the PROSPECT reactor antineutrino experiment. The magnitude and uniformity of light collection and neutron/gamma discrimination power in the energy range of antineutrino inverse beta decay products have been studied using gamma and spontaneous fission calibration sources deployed along the cell long axis. We also study neutron-gamma discrimination and light collection abilities for differing PMT and reflecto…
Pulse shape discrimination for $α$ event rejection in BEGe-type high-purity germanium detectors
M. Smoluchowski Institute of Physics, Jagiellonian University（马泰乌什·斯莫卢霍夫斯基物理研究所，雅盖隆大学）；Jagiellonian University, Doctoral School of Exact and Natural Sciences（雅盖隆大学，精确与自然科学学院博士学校）
(Gd,La)$_2$Si$_2$O$_7$:Ce (La-GPS:Ce) is a new scintillator material with high light output, high energy resolution, and fast decay time. Moreover, the scintillator has a good light output even at high temperature (up to 150$^\circ$C) and is non-hygroscopic in nature; thus, it is especially suitable for underground resource exploration. Particle identification greatly expands the possible applications of scintillator. For resource exploration, the particle identification should be completed in a single pulse only. The pulse-shape discrimination of the scintillator was confirmed. We compared tw…
With the development of high-speed readout electronics, the digital pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods have attracted the attention of more researchers, especially in the field of high energy physics and neutron detection. How to choose a PSD algorithm and corresponding data acquisition system (DAQ) naturally becomes a critical problem to settle down for the detection system designers. In this paper, the relationship between the classification performance of different PSD algorithms and digitizers' sampling properties (including sampling rate and the effective number of bits) has been re…
Performance and pulse shape discrimination of glass scintillator SG101 for neutron detection
School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学物理学院）；Institut Franco-Chinois de l’Énergie Nucléaire , Sun Yat-sen University（中法核能源学院，中山大学）；School of Science, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学理学院）；Beijing Hoton Technology Co.Ltd.（北京霍顿科技有限公司）
Sufficient current pulse information of nuclear radiation detectors can be retained by direct waveform digitization owing to the improvement of digitizer's performance. In many circumstances, reasonable cost and power consumption are on demand while the energy resolution and PSD performance should be ensured simultaneously for detectors. This paper will quantitatively analyse the influence of vertical resolution and sampling rate of digitizers on the energy resolution and PSD performance. The energy resolution and PSD performance can be generally optimized by improving the sampling rate and EN…
The CDEX (China Dark matter Experiment) now deploys ~10 kg pPCGe (p-type Point Contact Germanium) detectors in CJPL (China Jinping Underground Laboratory). It aims to detect rare events such as dark matter and 0vbb (neutrinoless double beta decay). The discrimination of bulk and very bulk events are essential for improvements of the analysis threshold of dark matter. Very bulk events are generated near the p+ point surface of pPCGe, which are usually from radioactive materials of electronic devices. Due to different locations of charge collection, bulk and very bulk events have different pulse…
A pulse-shape discrimination method based on artificial neural networks was applied to pulses simulated for different background, signal and signal-like interactions inside a germanium detector. The simulated pulses were used to investigate variations of efficiencies as a function of used training set. It is verified that neural networks are well-suited to identify background pulses in true-coaxial high-purity germanium detectors. The systematic uncertainty on the signal recognition efficiency derived using signal-like evaluation samples from calibration measurements is estimated to be 5\%. Th…
In particle physics experiments, pulse shape discrimination (PSD) is a powerful tool for eliminating the major background from signals. However, the analysis methods have been a bottleneck to improving PSD performance. In this study, two machine learning methods -- multilayer perceptron and convolutional neural network -- were applied to PSD, and their PSD performance was compared with that of conventional analysis methods. Three calcium-based halide scintillators were grown using the vertical Bridgman--Stockbarger method and used for the evaluation of PSD. Compared with conventional analysis …
The basic principles of detection of fast neutrons with liquid scintillator detectors are reviewed, together with a real example in the form of the Neutron Wall array. Two of the challenges in neutron detection, discrimination of neutrons and gamma rays and identification of cross talk between detectors due to neutron scattering, are briefly discussed, as well as possible solutions to these problems. The possibilities of using digital techniques for pulse-shape discrimination are examined. Results from a digital and analog versions of the zero cross-over algorithm are presented. The digital pu…
We report on the characterization of two inverted coaxial Ge detectors in the context of being employed in future $^{76}$Ge neutrinoless double beta ($0νββ$) decay experiments. It is an advantage that such detectors can be produced with bigger Ge mass as compared to the planar Broad Energy Ge detectors (BEGe) that are currently used in the GERDA $0νββ$ decay experiment. This will result in lower background for the search of $0νββ$ decay due to a reduction of cables, electronics and holders. The measured resolution near the $^{76}$Ge Q-value at 2039 keV is 2.5 keV and their pulse-shape characte…
In the framework of the ``ULTIMA'' project, we use ultra cold superfluid 3He bolometers for the direct detection of single particle events, aimed for a future use as a dark matter detector. One parameter of the pulse shape observed after such an event is the thermalization time constant. Until now it was believed that this parameter only depends on geometrical factors and superfluid 3He properties, and that it is independent of the nature of the incident particles. In this report we show new results which demonstrate that a difference for muon- and neutron events, as well as events simulated b…
A brief outline of Dark Matter detection experiments using liquid argon technology is presented. The Pulse Shape background discrimination method (PSD) is described and the example of its use in 2.3 l R&D detector is given. Methods of calculating sensitivity of a Dark Matter detector are discussed and used to estimate the possible improvement of sensitivity after introduction of isotopically depleted liquid argon.
The use of Time-over-Threshold (TOT) for the discrimination between fast neutrons and gamma-rays is advantageous when large number of detection channels are required due to the simplicity of its implementation. However, the results obtained using the standard, Constant Threshold TOT (CT-TOT) are usually inferior to those obtained using other pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods, such as Charge Comparison or Zero-Crossing approaches, especially for low amplitude neutron/gamma-ray pulses. We evaluate another TOT approach for fast neutron/gamma-ray PSD using Constant-Fraction Time-over-Thresh…
We measured the decay time of the scintillation pulses produced by electron and nuclear recoils in CaF2(Eu) by a new fitting method. In the recoil energy region 5-30 keVee, we found differences of the decay time between electron and nuclear recoil events. In the recoil energy region above 20 keVee, we found that the decay time is independent of the recoil energy.
There are recent interests with CsI(Tl) scintillating crystals for Dark Matter experiments. The key merit is the capability to differentiate nuclear recoil (nr) signatures from the background $β/ γ$-events due to ambient radioactivity on the basis of their different pulse shapes. One of the major experimental challenges is to perform such pulse shape analysis in the statistics-limited domain where the light output is close to the detection threshold. Using data derived from measurements with low energy $γ$'s and nuclear recoils due to neutron elastic scatterings, it was verified that the pulse…
There is a key research issue to accurately select out neutron signals and discriminate gamma signals from a mixed radiation field in the neutron detection. This paper proposes a fractal spectrum discrimination approach by means of different spectrum characteristics of neutron and gamma. Figure of merit and average discriminant error ratio are adopted together to evaluate the discriminant effects. Different neutron and gamma signals with various noises and pulse pile-ups are simulated according to real data in the literature. The proposed approach is compared with the digital charge integratio…
Fast-neutron/gamma-ray pulse-shape discrimination has been performed for the organic liquid scintillators NE 213A and EJ 305 using a time-of-flight based neutron-tagging technique and waveform digitization on an event-by-event basis. Gamma-ray sources and a Geant4-based simulation were used to calibrate the scintillation-light yield. The difference in pulse shape for the neutron and gamma-ray events was analysed by integrating selected portions of the digitized waveform to produce a figure-of-merit for neutron/gamma-ray separation. This figure-of-merit has been mapped as a function of detector…
We constructed a neutron calibration facility based on a 300-mCi Am-Be source in conjunction with a search for weakly interacting massive particle candidates for dark matter. The facility is used to study the response of CsI(Tl) crystals to nuclear recoils induced by neutrons from the Am-Be source and comparing them with the response to electron recoils produced by Compton scattering of 662-keV $γ$-rays from a $^{137}$Cs source. The measured results on pulse shape discrimination (PSD) between nuclear- and electron-recoil events are quantified in terms of quality factors. A comparison with simi…
The LUX dark matter search experiment is a 350 kg dual-phase xenon time projection chamber located at the 4850 ft level of the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, SD. The success of two-phase xenon detectors for dark matter searches relies on their ability to distinguish electron recoil (ER) background events from nuclear recoil (NR) signal events. Typically, the NR-ER discrimination is obtained from the ratio of the electroluminescence light (S2) to the prompt scintillation light (S1). Analysis of the S1 pulse shape is an additional discrimination technique that can be used to dist…
A comparative study of the neutron-$γ$ Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) with seven organic scintillators is performed using an identical setup and digital electronics. The scintillators include plastics (EJ-299-33 and a plastic prototype), single crystals (stilbene and the recent doped $p$-terphenyl) and liquids (BC501A, NE213 and the deuterated liquid BC537). First, the overall PSD performance of the different scintillators is compared and threshold neutron energies for a given discrimination quality are determined. Then, using statistical arguments, two intrinsic contributions to the PSD cap…
Various pulse shape discrimination methods have been used to solve the neutron-gamma discrimination problem. But most of them are limited to off-line calculation due to the computation amount and FPGA performance. In order to realize real time discriminating neutron and gamma, a new algorithm based on the traditional pulse shape discrimination methods was proposed in this paper. The new algorithm takes into account the physical properties of the pulse signal, which greatly reduces the computation and dead time without losing the precision, and can work on FPGA directly. It has a good performan…
Cs$_2$LiLaBr$_6$:Ce$^{3+}$ (CLLB) is an elpasolite scintillator that offers excellent linearity and gamma-ray energy resolution and sensitivity to thermal neutrons with the ability to perform pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) to distinguish gammas and neutrons. Our investigation of CLLB has indicated the presence of intrinsic radioactive alpha background that we have determined to be from actinium contamination of the lanthanum component. We measured the pulse shapes for gamma, thermal neutron, and alpha events and determined that PSD can be performed to separate the alpha background with a mod…
SuperCDMS is the next phase of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, which measures both phonon and charge signals generated by particle recoils within a germanium target mass. Charge signals are employed both in the definition of a fiducial volume and in the rejection of electron recoil background events. Alternatively, phonons generated by the charge carriers can also be used for the same two goals. This paper describes preliminary efforts to observe and quantify these contributions to the phonon signal and then use them to reject background events. A simple analysis using only one pu…
We report on the response of a high light-output NaI(Tl) crystal to nuclear recoils induced by neutrons from an Am-Be source and compare the results with the response to electron recoils produced by Compton scattered 662 keV $γ$-rays from a $^{137}$Cs source. The measured pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) power of the NaI(Tl) crystal is found to be significantly improved because of the high light output of the NaI(Tl) detector. We quantify the PSD power with a quality factor and estimate the sensitivity to the interaction rate for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with nucleons, and …
We report on the results of the positional-dependent pulse shape discrimination (PSD) parameter observed within a monolithic CLLB scintillation crystal. CLLB, a relatively novel inorganic scintillation crystal, is capable of PSD between gamma rays, neutrons, and alpha particles. In this work, we observed distinguishable differences in the pulse shapes for gamma-ray-induced events. The CLLB crystals used for this experiment are 5 cm (diameter) by 10 cm (length). By using monoenergetic 2.614 MeV photons from a set of thoriated welding rods and performing collimated scans along the length of the …
The continued advancements of Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) have made them viable photosensors for low recoil energy Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) between fast neutron and gamma interactions when coupled to an appropriate scintillator. At the same time, the large number of channels in a typical array calls for the development of low-cost and low-power electronics. A custom integrated circuit (ASIC) is an ideal solution for this purpose. To assess the requirements for such an ASIC, studies were performed using two scintillators, Stilbene and EJ-276, coupled to a 6 x 6 mm SiPM from Onsemi.…
Scintillators with pulse-shape discrimination (PSD) capability are of great interest to many fields in the scientific community. The ability to discern a gamma ray from a neutron using PSD varies between different types of scintillator materials and dopants. A new generation of organic scintillator materials with PSD capability were studied to determine their radiation hardness to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. The PSD capability, average pulse shapes, and light output of four types of organic scintillator were characterized before and after neutron and gamma-ray irradiation. The main go…
In the last decade, Direct Dark Matter searches has become a very active research program, spawning dozens of projects world wide and leading to contradictory results. It is on this stage that the Dark matter Experiment with liquid Argon and Pulse shape discrimination (DEAP) is about to enter. With a 3600~kg liquid argon target and a 1000~kg fiducial mass, it is designed to run background free during 3 years, reaching an unprecedented sensitivity of 10$^{-46}$~cm$^2$ for a WIMP mass of 100 GeV. In order to achieve this impressive feat, the collaboration followed a two-pronged approach: a caref…
The scintillation mechanism in NaI:Tl crystals produces different pulse shapes that are dependent on the incoming particle type. The time distribution of scintillation light from nuclear recoil events decays faster than for electron recoil events and this difference can be categorised using various Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) techniques. In this study, we measured nuclear and electron recoils in a NaI:Tl crystal, with electron equivalent energies between 2 and 40 keV. We report on a new PSD approach, based on an event-type likelihood; this outperforms the charge-weighted mean-time, which …
Discrimination of the detection of fast neutrons and gamma rays in a liquid scintillator detector has been investigated using digital pulse-processing techniques. An experimental setup with a 252Cf source, a BC-501 liquid scintillator detector, and a BaF2 detector was used to collect waveforms with a 100 Ms/s, 14 bit sampling ADC. Three identical ADC's were combined to increase the sampling frequency to 300 Ms/s. Four different digital pulse-shape analysis algorithms were developed and compared to each other and to data obtained with an analogue neutron-gamma discrimination unit. Two of the di…
We demonstrate the use of a convolutional neural network to perform neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination, where the only inputs to the network are the raw digitised SiPM signals from a dual scintillator detector element made of 6LiF:ZnS(Ag) scintillator and PVT plastic. A realistic labelled dataset was created to train the network by exposing the detector to an AmBe source, and a data-driven method utilsing a separate PMT was used to assign labels to the recorded signals. This approach is compared to the charge integration and continuous wavelet transform methods and is found to provide su…
Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) is one of the most distinctive features of liquid scintillators. Since the introduction of the scintillation techniques in the field of particle detection, many studies have been carried out to characterize intrinsic properties of the most common liquid scintillator mixtures in this respect. Several application methods and algorithms able to achieve optimum discrimination performances have been developed. However, the vast majority of these studies have been performed on samples of small dimensions. The Counting Test Facility, prototype of the solar neutrino ex…
A digital pulse shape discrimination system based on a programmable module NI-5772 has been established and tested with EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector. The module was operated by means of running programs developed in LabVIEW with the sampling frequency up to 1.6GS/s. Standard gamma sources 22Na, 137Cs and 60Co were used to calibrate the EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector, and the gamma response function has been obtained. Digital algorithms for charge comparison method and zero-crossing method have been developed. The experimental results showed that both digital signal processing (DS…
First studies of event discrimination with a Broad-Energy Germanium (BEGe) detector are presented. A novel pulse shape method, exploiting the characteristic electrical field distribution inside BEGe detectors, allows to identify efficiently single-site events and to reject multi-site events. The first are typical for neutrinoless double beta decays (0-nu-2-beta) and the latter for backgrounds from gamma-ray interactions. The obtained survival probabilities of backgrounds at energies close to Q(76Ge) = 2039 keV are 0.93% for events from 60Co, 21% from 226Ra and 40% from 228Th. This background s…
Liquid-argon scintillation detectors are used in fundamental physics experiments and are being considered for security applications. Previous studies have suggested that the addition of small amounts of xenon dopant improves performance in light or signal yield, energy resolution, and particle discrimination. In this study, we investigate the detector response for xenon dopant concentrations from 9 +/- 5 ppm to 1100 +/- 500 ppm xenon (by weight) in 6 steps. The 3.14-liter detector uses tetraphenyl butadiene (TPB) wavelength shifter with dual photomultiplier tubes and is operated in single-phas…
A Discrete Fourier Transform Method (DFTM) for discrimination between the signal of neutrons and gamma rays in organic scintillation detectors is presented. The method is based on the transformation of signals into the frequency domain using the sine and cosine Fourier transforms in combination with the discrete Fourier transform. The method is largely benefited from considerable differences that usually is available between the zero-frequency components of sine and cosine and the norm of the amplitude of the DFT for neutrons and gamma-ray signals. Moreover, working in frequency domain natural…
We present measurements of the scintillation pulse shape in liquid xenon for nuclear recoils (NR) and electronic recoils (ER) at electric fields of 0 to 0.5 kV/cm for energies $<$ 15 keV and $<$ 70 keV electron-equivalent, respectively. The average pulse shapes are well-described by an effective model with two exponential decay components, where both decay times are fit parameters. We find significant broadening of the pulse for ER due to delayed luminescence from the recombination process. In addition to the effective model, we fit a model describing the recombination luminescence for ER at z…
In order to suppress the background in rare event detection experiments such as 0ν\b{eta}\b{eta}, this paper developed a set of single/multi-site event pulse shape discrimination methods suitable for strip multi-electrode high-purity germanium detectors. In the simulation of 228Th, this method achieves 7.92 times suppression of SEP events at 2103 keV with a 57.43 % survival rate of DEP events at 1592 keV. The experimental study of 57Co and 137Cs sources was carried out by using the self-developed strip multi-electrode high-purity germanium detector prototype measurement system and compared wit…
