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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Nuclear

Air Force Institute of Technology

Theses/Dissertations

Spectroscopy

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Directional Pair-Production Spectrometer Design For Airborne Stand-Off Detection Of Special Nuclear Material, William L. Harrell Mar 2011

Directional Pair-Production Spectrometer Design For Airborne Stand-Off Detection Of Special Nuclear Material, William L. Harrell

Theses and Dissertations

The purposes of this research are to experimentally and theoretically prove the concept of a directional pair-production spectrometer to detect and locate the tailings that are created when making Special Nuclear Material (SNM) at stand-off distances from a remotely piloted vehicle (RPV). A directional pair-production spectrometer uses the information garnered from the high energy gamma rays emitted by these SNM manufacturing tailings to perform pair-production spectroscopy and identify the isotope of interest. Through simultaneous operation as a Compton camera, the detection system will be able to measure rudimentary directional information from the medium energy gamma decays. The detector used for …


Improving The Efficiency Of Photon Collection By Compton Rescue, Alexander W. Stevenson Mar 2011

Improving The Efficiency Of Photon Collection By Compton Rescue, Alexander W. Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

A method to improve the efficiency of photon collection in thin planar HPGe detectors was investigated. The method involved implementing a second HPGe detector to collect Compton scattered photons from the primary detector and incorporating coincident interactions in the two detectors that sum to the full energy event into the energy spectrum. This method is termed Compton rescue because the Compton scattered photons make a partial energy deposition in the primary detector and are added back to the spectrum after being detected by the second detector. This research has implications on improving the efficiency of positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) techniques …