PoS - Proceedings of Science
Volume 395 - 37th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2021) - SH - Solar & Heliospheric
Development of the Solar Neutron TRACking (SONTRAC) Concept
J.G. Mitchell*, G.A. De Nolfo, A. Bruno, J. Dumonthier, I. Liceaga-Indart, J. Link, J. Legere, R. Messner, J. Ryan, G. Suarez and T. Tatoli
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: July 30, 2021
Published on: March 18, 2022
Abstract
Fast neutrons ( > 0.5 MeV) are ubiquitous in nature, originating from nuclear interactions in environments including the solar corona, within planetary atmospheres, and in the lunar regolith. However, measurements of fast neutrons of solar origin are extremely limited due to the challenges imposed by high backgrounds and the relatively short lifetime of free neutrons before they undergo beta decay. Traditional double-scatter neutron spectrometers require an incident neutron to elastically scatter in two widely spaced detectors, allowing the reconstruction of the incident neutron’s energy and direction onto an annulus. While double-scatter spectrometers are well-proven, they suffer from low effective area due to spacecraft size constraints as well as limited resolution due to the possibility of the recoil protons escaping the detector volume. The Solar Neutron TRACking (SONTRAC) concept overcomes these limitations through the use of stacked planes of plastic scintillating fibers arranged in an orthogonal configuration, to measure the ionization tracks of recoil protons. The recoil protons’ energy and direction supplant the need to measure the neutron’s time-of-flight between detectors, thereby dramatically increasing the effective area and detection efficiency. SONTRAC employs modern, miniature silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) to measure the light output from the fibers. The SONTRAC concept, combined with recent developments, including the development of a new fiber-bundle without an epoxy binder, testing of new high-performance application-specific-integrated-circuits, and development of new readout and reconstruction techniques are presented.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.1250
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in "article" format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in "proceeding" format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.