Neutrons production on the IPHI accelerator for the validation of the design of the compact neutron source SONATE

Hoang Ngoc Tran (1) , Frédéric Ott (2, 3) , Jacques Darpentigny (2, 4) , Anthony Marchix (1) , Alain Letourneau (1) , Nicolas Chauvin (1) , Fabien Prunes (2, 5) , Benoît Homatter (2, 4) , Burkhard Annighöfer (2, 5) , Alain Menelle (2) , Jérôme Schwindling (1)

1 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers
2 LLB - UMR 12 - Laboratoire Léon Brillouin
3 NFMQ - LLB - Nouvelles frontières dans les matériaux quantiques
4 MMB - LLB - Matière molle et biophysique
5 INFRA - LLB - Infrastructures et développement

We aim at building a compact accelerator-based neutron source (CANS) which would provide a thermal neutron flux on the order of 4x10 12 n.s-1 .cm-2 .sr-1. Such a brilliance would put compact neutron sources on par with existing medium flux neutron research reactors for neutron scattering experiments. We performed the first neutron production tests on the IPHI proton accelerator at Saclay at a proton energy of 3 MeV. The thermal neutron flux were measured using gold foil activation and 3 He detectors. The measured flux were compared with GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations (10.4) in which the whole experimental setup was modelled. There is a good agreement between the experimental measurements and the Monte-Carlo simulations. The available modelling tools will allow us to optimize the whole Target Moderator Reflector assembly together with the neutron scattering spectrometer geometries for the design of the neutron scattering facility SONATE.

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

Hoang Ngoc Tran, Frédéric Ott, Jacques Darpentigny, Anthony Marchix, Alain Letourneau, et al.. Neutrons production on the IPHI accelerator for the validation of the design of the compact neutron source SONATE. EPJ Web of Conferences, 2020, 231, pp.01007. ⟨10.1051/epjconf/202023101007⟩. ⟨cea-03246584⟩