Chernyavsky SM, Dubois M, Korobkina E, Lychagin EV, Muzychka AY, Nekhaev GV, Nesvizhevsky VV, Nezvanov AY, Strelkov AV, Zhernenkov KN. Enhanced directional extraction of very cold neutrons using a diamond nanoparticle powder reflector.
Rev Sci Instrum 2022;
93:123302. [PMID:
36586889 DOI:
10.1063/5.0124833]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2022] [Accepted: 11/09/2022] [Indexed: 06/17/2023]
Abstract
For more than a decade, detonation nanodiamond (DND) powders have been actively studied as a material for efficient reflectors of very cold neutrons (VCNs) and cold neutrons. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, the possibility of enhanced directional extraction of a VCN beam using a reflector made of fluorinated DND powder. With respect to the theoretical flux calculated from an isotropic source at the bottom of the reflector cavity, the gain in the VCN flux density along the beam axis is ∼10 for the neutron velocities of ∼57 and ∼75 m/s. The use of such reflectors for enhanced directional extraction of VCN from neutron sources will make it possible to noticeably increase the neutron fluxes delivered to experiments and expand the scope of VCN applications.
Collapse