Neutron Time Interval Distributions with Background Neutrons

Abstract

A single cosmic ray air shower event can produce multiple neutrons. The arrival times of neutron counts from such an event creates a clustering pattern distinctly different from random sources. A theory for the time interval distribution between neutron counts from both a correlated source and cosmic ray air showers is given and a method is developed to compute the probability distributions for a cosmic ray air shower to create detected neutrons.

Keywords:

• Neutron time correlations
• background neutrons
• fission chains

View addendum:

ADDENDUM: Neutron Time Interval Distributions with Background Neutrons

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank L. Nakae, D. Pugh, and P. Kerr for supplying us with the experimental data.

A draft of this paper has Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) document number LLNL-JRNL-678514. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by LLNL under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency under DTRA10027-10273.