Speaker
Kimberly Palladino
(SLAC)
Description
Low background experiments must contend with the intrinsic radioactivity of their detector and surrounding materials, including radiogenic neutrons which may be generated by spontaneous fission and alpha-n reactions. To calculate the expected neutron yield and spectra from alpha-n reactions due to the thorium and uranium decay chains, cross-section databases and nuclear model code systems must be consulted. Here we present a comparison of the neutron spectra and yields generated by two such collections: EMPIRE cross-sections used with SOURCES4 nuclear modeling code, and the TENDL data library used with a TALYS codebase. We focus our comparisons upon materials common to current direct dark matter detectors, and present the implications these differences may have in neutron background predictions.
Primary author
Kimberly Palladino
(SLAC)
Co-authors
C. Zhang
(USD)
D.-M. Mei
(USD)
H. Qiu
(SMU)
J. Cooley
(SMU)
M. Selvi
(INFN)
Dr
Silvia Scorza
(KIT)
