The bent crystal diffraction spectrometer at the BR2 reactor in Mol

Abstract The DuMond-type bent crystal diffraction spectrometer installed at the BR2 reactor in Mol is presented. The spectrometer is mainly designed to study nuclear γ-transitions following thermal neutron capture. It covers the energy interval 25 ≦ E γ ≦ 1500 keV. Instead of the traditionally used quartz crystals, a highly perfect silicium crystal is chosen as analysing crystal. Diffraction occurs from the (220) plane. The “quasi-mosaic” width, introduced by bending the crystal, is as small as 0.2″. The integrated reflecting power R of the bent crystal stays constant up to 1.5 MeV in first, 680 keV in second and 300 keV in third diffraction order. For higher photon energies, only an E −1 energy dependence is observed in second and third diffraction order. Consequently, besides improving the energy resolution, the use of these silicium crystals substantially increases the spectrometer efficiency and extends the high energy limit of bent crystal diffraction spectrometers. The diffraction angles are measured with a symmetrical interferometer system which covers an angular range of −6° to +6° with a precision of about 0.01″. Minimum diffraction line widths of 0.9″ have been measured, corresponding to an energy resolution ΔE = 1.35 × 10 −6 E 2 n −1 keV −1 . The dominant contribution to the observed line widths arises from the finite extent of the source.