The low-energy photon tagger NEPTUN

A new photon tagging spectrometer was built at the superconducting Darmstadt electron linear accelerator (S-DALINAC). The system is designed for tagging photons in an energy range from 6 to 20 MeV with the emphasis on best possible energy resolution and intensity. The absolute energy resolution of photons at 10 MeV is expected to be about 20 keV. With scintillating fibres as focal-plane detectors a maximum rate of tagged photons of 104104 keV-1s-1 will be achieved. Detailed design studies including Monte Carlo simulations are presented, as well as results for the measured tagged photon energy profile of the system realized so far. This photon-tagging facility will allow to determine the photon absorption cross-sections as a function of excitation energy and to study the decay patterns of nuclear photo-excitations in great detail.