What Can Efficiency Do for You? The Use of High-Efficiency Detectors for Studying Beta Decay
Dr. Charlie Rasco
Physics Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Historically, improvements of novel nuclear physics detectors involve increases in measurement precision/resolution while trading efficiency and affordability of prior technologies. The reduction in efficiency is often merely accepted as inherent to the new detectors. While these improved-precision detectors have enabled important applications and have been involved in many exciting discoveries in nuclear physics, high-efficiency gamma detectors, with efficiencies near 100% but poor energy resolution, offer a complimentary alternative to high-precision detectors. There are many situations where high efficiency is more helpful than high precision. The study of complex beta decays, such as those occurring in the vast majority of fission products, is an example where high efficiency gives important complementary information to high-precision detectors. One specific set of high-efficiency gamma-ray detector are called total absorption spectrometers. I will focus this seminar on the design and multiple uses of the Modular Total Absorption Spectrometer (MTAS) past, current, and future. This includes impacts on reactor physics and applications, identifying interesting small decay branches, and measuring previously inaccessible individual beta-energy spectra.
Hosted by Prof. Brodeur.
Zoom link: https://notredame.zoom.us/j/99165675577.