Calorimetric-time-of-flight technique for determination of energy spectra of particles from a high intensity pulsed proton target

A Calorimetric-Time-Of-Flight (CTOF) technique is proposed for real-time, high precision measurement of neutrons spectrum, and for evaluation of charged particles spectra and parameters of gamma radiation. By using the CTOF technique, it is possible to make these measurements in framework of the single experiment. This technique consists of a set of current mode time-of-flight instruments each having a set of organic scintillation detector placed at a different distance from a source at an interested angle from the initial proton beam direction. The CTOF technique is applicable to burst source conditions with radiation pulse duration of some dozens of nanoseconds and intensity of the order of 1010–1012 particles per pulse. In experiment, a cylindrical tungsten target of 20 cm in diameter, 22.5 cm thick, was irradiated with 50 ns width, 1.2 and 0.5 GeV proton pulses of 2.5×1011 ppp. One-litre scintillators followed with 120 m long light-guides and photomultipliers were used for determining neutron and proton spectra and gamma rays flux intensity at the angle 175° from the initial proton beam direction. The method and results of this experiment are given in this paper.