Alpha coincidence spectroscopy studied with GEANT4

Author

Dion, Michael P. ; Miller, Brian W. ; Tatishvili, Gocha ; Warren, G.A.

Author_Institution

Pacific Northwest Nat. Lab., Richland, WA, USA

fYear

2013

fDate

Oct. 27 2013-Nov. 2 2013

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

The high-energy side of peaks in alpha spectra, e.g. ²⁴¹Am, as measured with a silicon detector has structure caused mainly by alpha-conversion electron and to some extent alpha-gamma coincidences. We compare GEANT4 simulation results to ²⁴¹Am alpha spectroscopy measurements with a passivated implanted planar silicon detector. A discrepancy between the measurements and simulations suggest that the GEANT4 photon evaporation database for ²³⁷Np (daughter of ²⁴¹Am decay) does not accurately describe the conversion electron spectrum and therefore was found to have discrepancies with experimental measurements. We describe how to improve the agreement between GEANT4 and alpha spectroscopy for actinides of interest by including experimental measurements of conversion electron spectroscopy into the photon evaporation database.

Keywords

alpha-particle spectra; alpha-particle spectroscopy; electron spectroscopy; evaporation model; high energy physics instrumentation computing; nuclear structure; nuclei with mass number 220 or higher; silicon radiation detectors; ²³⁷Np GEANT4 photon evaporation database; ²⁴¹Am alpha spectroscopy measurements; ²⁴¹Am decay daughter; GEANT4 simulation results; actinide alpha spectroscopy; alpha coincidence spectroscopy; alpha spectra high-energy peak side; alpha-conversion electron; alpha-gamma coincidences; conversion electron spectroscopy experimental measurements; conversion electron spectrum; measurement discrepancy; passivated implanted planar silicon detector; simulation discrepancy; Databases; Detectors; Isotopes; Laboratories; Photonics; Silicon; Spectroscopy; GEANT4; alpha spectrometry; conversion electrons;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC), 2013 IEEE

Conference_Location

Seoul

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-0533-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2013.6829561

Filename

6829561