A fast neutron time-of-flight spectrometer

Abstract A neutron time-of-flight spectrometer has been designed and constructed. It consists of a time-to-amplitude converter, a beam pulser and associated neutron detectors. The time-to-amplitude converter gives a time resolution of 3.5 × 10 −10 sec using 56 AVP photomultipliers and small plastic scintillators. With two 10 × 5 cm NE213 liquid scintillators and 58 AVP photomultipliers the time resolution was 1.1 × 10 −9 sec. From 10 to 100% of its range, the differential nonlinearity was ± 0.3% and the integral linearity ± 0.8%. The beam pulser produced beam pulses 2 nsec wide with a beam utilization of 10–12% and 1 nsec wide with a 6% utilization.