Abstract
Abstract
Riptide is a detector concept aiming to track fast neutrons. It is based on
neutron-proton elastic collisions inside a plastic scintillator, where the neutron momentum can
be measured by imaging the scintillation light. More specifically, by stereoscopically imaging the
recoil proton tracks, the proposed apparatus provides neutron spectrometry capability and enable
the online analysis of the specific energy loss along the track. In principle, the spatial and
topological event reconstruction enables particle discrimination, which is a crucial property for
neutron detectors. In this contribution, we report the advances on the Riptide detector
concept. In particular, we have developed a Geant4 optical simulation to demonstrate the
possibility of reconstructing with sufficient precision the tracks and the vertices of neutron
interactions inside a plastic scintillator. To realistically model the optics of the scintillation
detector, mono-energetic protons were generated inside a 6 × 6 × 6 cm3 cubic BC-408
scintillator, and the produced optical photons were propagated and then recorded on a scoring
plane corresponding to the surfaces of the cube. The photons were then transported through an
optical system to a 2 × 2 cm2 photo sensitive area with 1 Megapixel. Moreover, we have
developed two different analysis procedures to reconstruct 3D tracks: one based on data fitting
and one on Principal Component Analysis. The main results of this study will be presented with a
particular focus on the role of the optical system and the attainable spatial and energy
resolution.