Low counting rate measurement on thermal neutron induced fission using cross-correlation technique

The measurement procedure based on the continuous thermal neutron beam modulation with a mechanical chopper was developed for delayed neutron yield measurement of the thermal neutron induced fission of [Formula: see text]Np. The idea of the procedure is similar to that widely used in modern computer communications to prevent unauthorized data access. The data is modulated with a predefined pattern before transmission to the public network, and only the recipient that has the modulation pattern is able to demodulate it upon receipt. For thermal neutron induced reaction applications, the thermal neutron beam modulation pattern was used to demodulate the measured delayed neutron intensity signals on the detector output, resulting in nonzero output only for the detector signals correlated with the beam modulation. The comparison of the method with the conventional measurement procedure was provided, and it was demonstrated that the cross-correlation procedure has special features making it superior to the conventional one, especially when the measured value is extremely small in comparison with the background. Due to the strong sensitivity of the measurement procedure on the modulation pattern of the neutron beam, one can implement the modulation pattern of a specific shape to separate the effect of the thermal part of the beam from the higher energy part in the most confident way in the particular experiment. The remarkable property of our method is related to the unique possibility of separation of the effects caused exclusively by thermal neutrons using the neutron time-of-flight measurement available on the IBR-2 pulsed reactor.