A graphite-moderated pulsed spallation ultra-cold neutron source

Abstract

Proposals exist and efforts are under way to construct pulsed spallation ultra-cold neutron (UCN) sources at accelerator laboratories around the world. At the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland, and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), U.S.A., it is planned to use solid deuterium (SD_2) for the UCN production from cold neutrons. The philosophies about how the cold neutrons are obtained are quite different, though. The present proposal describes a third approach which applies a temperature optimized graphite moderator in combination with the SD_2 and qualitatively combines advantages of the different schemes. The scheme described here allows to build a powerful UCN source. Assuming a pulsed 2 mA, 590 MeV proton beam with an average current of 10 microA, one obtains UCN densities in excess of 2000 cm^{-3}, UCN fluxes of about 10^6 cm^{-2} s^{-1}, and total numbers of UCN in excess of 2*10^9 every 800 s.