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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Most nuclear data measurements are performed at accelerators large enough to occupy a geologic formation a kilometer wide, like the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center located on a mesa in the desert. But a portable device that can reveal the composition of materials quickly on-site would greatly benefit cases such as in archaeology and nuclear arms treaty verification.

Research published this week in AIP Advances, from AIP Publishing, used computational simulations to show that with the right geometric adjustments, it is possible to perform accurate neutron resonance transmission analysis in a device just 5 meters long.

"We expected massive backgrounds to dilute and contaminate our signal, and early simulation work confirmed that the scale of these effects would make the technique entirely impossible," author Areg Danagoulian said. "However, careful optimization of the geometries allowed us to almost completely suppress these effects, giving us a near-perfect signal."

Journal Reference:
Ezra M. Engel, Ethan A. Klein, Areg Danagoulian. Feasibility study of a compact neutron resonance transmission analysis instrument. AIP Advances, 2020; 10 (1): 015051 DOI: 10.1063/1.5129961

Original Submission