Neutron resonance transmission spectroscopy with high spatial and energy resolution at the J-PARC pulsed neutron source

The sharp variation of neutron attenuation at certain energies specific to particular nuclides (the lower range being from ~1 eV up to ~1 keV), can be exploited for the remote mapping of element and/or isotope distributions, as well as temperature probing, within relatively thick samples. Intense pulsed neutron beam-lines at spallation sources combined with a high spatial, high-timing resolution neutron counting detector, provide a unique opportunity to measure neutron transmission spectra through the time-of-flight technique. We present the results of experiments where spatially resolved neutron resonances were measured, at energies up to 50 keV. These experiments were performed with the intense flux low background NOBORU neutron beamline at the J-PARC neutron source and the high timing resolution (~20 ns at epithermal neutron energies) and spatial resolution (~55 µm) neutron counting detector using microchannel plates coupled to a Timepix electronic readout. Simultaneous element-specific imaging was carried out for several materials, at a spatial resolution of ~150 µm. The high timing resolution of our detector combined with the low background beamline, also enabled characterization of the neutron pulse itself - specifically its pulse width, which varies with neutron energy. The results of our measurements are in good agreement with the predicted results for the double pulse structure of the J-PARC facility, which provides two 100 ns-wide proton pulses separated by 600 ns, broadened by the neutron energy moderation process. Thermal neutron radiography can be conducted simultaneously with resonance transmission spectroscopy, and can reveal the internal structure of the samples. The transmission spectra measured in our experiments demonstrate the feasibility of mapping elemental distributions using this non-destructive technique, for those elements (and in certain cases, specific isotopes), which have resonance energies below a few keV, and with lower resolution for elements with relatively high resonance energies in the 1-30 keV range.