Scintillating Elpasolite for Neutron Spectroscopy Enhancement – SENSE

Detailed spectroscopy of decay products is one of the key technics in order to study nuclei far from stability. With the development of new radioactive ion beam facilities in Europe, very neutron-rich nuclei started to be available for such studies. As we go from the valley of stability towards the neutron drip line, the available energy for a nucleus to decay (Qbeta) tends to increase, whereas the request energy to remove one or more neutron(s) (Sxn) tends to decrease leading to the possibility of neutron emission after ???? decay. Recently, it was discovered a competition between neutron and high energy gamma-ray emission in exotic nuclei. It order to further study this phenomenon, the development of a detector that is able to measure the energy of both neutrons and gamma-rays with a good efficiency and energy resolution is needed.
I propose to use the emerging technology of Li-based elpasolite to solve it. These scintillators have gained popularity due to their remarkable pulse shape discrimination properties, making them suitable for efficient simultaneous detection of gamma photons and neutrons. They do not only offer very high light output for gamma rays, resulting in good energy resolution but also allow the detection of thermal neutrons through the neutron capture reaction by lithium. Moreover, if chlorine is present in the crystal structure of the scintillator, fast neutrons can be detected through the reactions 35Cl(n,p)35S and 35Cl(n,alpha)32P, where the energies of the emitted proton and alpha particle vary linearly with the neutron energy, theoretically enabling its measurement.