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Submitted on 1 Jan 1984
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ILL FACILITIES FOR FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS
P. Ageron, W. Mampe
To cite this version:
P. Ageron, W. Mampe. ILL FACILITIES FOR FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS.
Journal de Physique Colloques, 1984, 45 (C3), pp.C3-279-C3-284. �10.1051/jphyscol:1984346�. �jpa-
00224063�
ILL FACILITIES FOR FUNDAMENTAL PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS
P. Ageron and
W.Mampe
m t u t
Laue-Langevin,
156X, 38042Grenoble Cedex, France
R6sum6
-On pr6sente l e s caract6ristiques des faisceaux de neutrons thermiques,
froids, trSs froids e t u l t r a f r o i d s d i s p n i b l e s pour des expgriences de physique fondamentale au rgacteur
5 haut flux de 1'ILL.Abstract -
Apresentation i s given of the characteristics of thermal, cold, very cold and ultracold neutron beams available f o r fundamental physics experiments a t the ILL High Flux Reactor.
As we have seen i n the previous contributions, a l l reactor-based fundamental physics experiments search for extremely small quantities, i n many cases being zero within the experimental accuracy. To obtain m a x b s e n s i t i v i t y three conditions have t o be f u l f i l l e d by t h e neutqon source: (a) highest possible neutron beam intensity, (b) longest possible reaction times
(a) The High Flux Reactor produces with 1.2 x 10 n cm-Z s- ' a t 15 cm distance from the core, one of the highest steady neutron fluxes obtained so f a r . One single f u e l element with 8.6 kg of 94% enriched uranium produces in an active core volume of 40 dm3 4x10" n/s a t 57 M i thermal power. The heavy water moderated reactor supplies 18 beam tubes with neutrons.
Amore detailed description of the reactor i t s e l f is given i n / I / and of the beam f a c i l i t i e s in /2,3/.
(b)
Aunique development of cold sources integrated into the heavy water moderator allows t o s h i f t the average neutron wavelength up. The existing cold source i s an aluminium sphere of 38 an diameter containing 25
1of deuterium a t 25 K. This source i s located i n front of a large beam tube housing 5 neutron guides with different radius of curvature. The unper- turbed flux a t the nose of the tube i s 2.2 x lo1' n an-' s-'. The present cold source gives a gain factor of 30 a t X
=6 8 and of about 60 a t X
>10 8. The modified cold source with an incorporated cavity inside the Dp w i l l be installed a t the place of the existing one during the reactor shut-down i n 1985. I t i s expected t o feed 1.5 - 1.8 times more cold neutrons i n t o the existing guides. The heavy demand of cold neutrons f o r experiments in a l l domains
w i l lhopefully be covered a f t e r the integration of a second cold source into the beam hole H5 in 1986. I t
w i l lbe a D2 cold source as well but with a cylinder geometry 21 an i n diameter and 21 cm in t h i c h e s s located inside a beam tube of 23
CIJdiameter. The unperturbed flux a t the nose of t h i s tube i s 7 x 10" n an s
l.I t w i l l be equipped with three guides which
w i l lfeed eight new instruments located i n a new neutron guide h a l l . The two main guides
w i l lhave a cross section of 6 x 12 an2 and
4x 12 a n 2 and r a d i i of curvature of 5000 m
and 3000m, respectively.
A t h i r d guide of 1.5 x 12 an2 w i l l provide neutrons f o r special beam experiments.
Article published online by EDP Sciences and available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/jphyscol:1984346
C3-280 JOURNAL DE PHYSIQUE
I t i s further mentioned t h a t cold neutrons can e a s i l y be polarized, a feature needed f o r a wide c l a s s of experiments studying the decay pro- p e r t i e s of the neutron o r i t s interaction with external f i e l d s . The low background
of gamma radiation and f a s t neutrons both highly abun- dant i n the reactor core region i s achieved:
- p a r t l y by t h e tangential arrange- ment (shown i n fig.1) of the beam tubes with respect t o the fuel element leading t o a sup- pression factor of approx. 10.
-
and t o a higher extent by the use of curved neutron guides. Neutron guides transport neutrons by t o t a l r e f l e c t i o n on t h e i r nickel coated glass
surfaces with ?ow
losses f a r from FIG.1 The beam tube arrangement a t the ILL HFR t h e reactor core.
The curvature R of a guide with a width a excludes a f t e r a guide length
1 =m a the d i r e c t view of t h e gamma ray and f a s t neutron source and intro- duces a cut-off angle
y =m~ which s h i f t s the maximum of the wavelength distribution t o longer wavelengths. The guides on t h e existing cold source have
a width of 3.mand a height of 20 cm which i s usually subdivised into 3 sections of 5 m. The length 1 varies between 10 and 120 m and the radius of curvature R between 25 m and 27000 m.
Table 1 shows the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of some neutron beams used f o r special beam experiments in contrast t o experiments on routinely scheduled instru- ment s .
HI
7HI 8 H2
2IH1 HI 42 S3 554
::
monochromatic beams, TABLE 1: Special beam f a c i l i t i e s given i s the number
of neutrons per or?2
and sec.
section (m21
3x5 3x20 3 pos.
@
10 3x5 2x2 1x1 guide
guide guide beam hole
guide guide guide
cold cold them.
cold cold cold cold
maximum
at ('1
9
20
1.5 3
78 5
@c (n/m2s)
4.5x109 4.5x108 lo9 10l0 5x109 5x106
::3x106
::given by the entrance windows of the beam tube and f o r short wavelength by the curvature of the following guide. For some experiments very monochromatic beams are obtained by putting a single c r y s t a l into a normal beam which r e f l e c t s out neutrons of one energy.
Polarized beams
:Actually there e x i s t s one polarized beam (SN7) fed by the existing cold source.
A second one
w i l lbe i n s t a l l e d a t the new cold source with a larger cross section and a higher flux.
(a) E : The cold guide with a beam s i z e of
3x 5 an2 transports over a length of 120 m t h e neutrons t o the f a r end of the existing neutron guide h a l l . The flux i s peaked a t about 5-!. Tp capture f l u x a t the guide e x i t has a density of (4-5) x lo9 n an s . The modified cold syurce w i l l hope- f u l l y bring t h i s flux up t o a value of 8 x 10' n an s . The actual experimental area i s situated outside the guide h a l l allowing the i n s t a l - l a t i o n of dangerous target material l i k e liquid-hydrogen. The capture flux a t t h i s position i s actually 1.4 x lo9 n cm s and w i l l be increased in future by the factor 1.5 - 1.8.
The beam is equipped with a spin flipper and a curved soller-type super- mirror polarizer developped a t the ILL by 0. Scharpf. This polarizer with
size
3x 5 cm2 has a transmission of 52% and a poiariqation product of 94.5%. A polarized flux density of
4.8x 10' n
ans ' peaked a t
'1.5.5 A i s obtained. This flux
w i l lbe increased by the modified cold source.
(b) The new polarized beam on the second cold source: This f a c i l i t y
w i l lbe available i n 1986 together with the i n s t a l l a t i o n of the second cold source.
The experimental area outside the second guide h a l l w i l l be connected with the cold source by a 6 x 12 an2 guide, 80 m long and with a radius of curvature of 5000 m which leads t o a cut-off a t
h =3 a. 20 m up-stream
from the experimental area the guide i s widened t o 6 x 18 m2 due t o the i n s t a l l a t i o n of a backscattering spectrometer. This leads t o a flux dilution factor which varies over the height of the guide and with wave- length between 0.56 and 1. The calculated capture flux i s , before dilution, 14 x 1 09, n q s which has t o be compared with the capture flux of 5 x l o 9 n c m s-' of the present SN7 beam, whereas the t o t a l neutron flow of the new 6 x 12 cm2 beam
w i l lbe 2.4 x 1011 n s-I compared t o 2.2 x 10" n s a t the present 3 x
5an2 beam.
Ultra cold neutron (UCN) f a c i l i t i e s : There are three UCN f a c i l i t i e s of different type a t the
ILL,one of which being only in the project phase: (a) PN5, (bj superthennal He source, (c) v e r t i c a l guide f o r very cold neutrons combined with a Steyerl turbine.
(a) PN5 i s in operation since 1977 and served as a t e s t f a c i l i t y f o r the development of the related techno- logies as well a s f o r f u l l scale experiments l i k e the EDM experiment and neutron optics experiments pre- sented a t t h i s workshop. PN5 (fig.2) uses an in-pile converter (H20) a t room temperature s i t t i n
thermal flux of 6 x 10" ?z-2 s - l .
This converter is separated from a 35' inclined electropolished stain-
FIG.2
UCN Source PN5
C3-282 JOURNAL
DE
PHYSIQUEl e s s s t e e l guide of 68 mm i.d. by a 0.6 mm zircaloy window. Outside the reactor walls follows a 7 x
7 an2nickel coated glass guide with a radius of curvature of about 10 m with the function of eliminating the direct radiation coming from the reactor, introducing even a more severe cut-off f o r neutrons with velocities v
>100 m s ' and bending the remaining neutron beam into the horizontal plane. The beam e x i t i s 3 m above the converter. A beam distribution box can direct the
UCNbeam to three different experiments. The original fluxes reported /4/ were about 100 UCN K 2 s - ' (with v(ms-l)<6) and 2 x 105VCN cm 's-l (6<v(ms ')<loo). In the meantime the UCN flux has decreased by approx. a factor of 10 due t o degradation of the guide transmission. The guide seems t o be mainly damaged i n the section which captures the thermal neutron flux.
Areplace- ment of t h i s section i s forseen i n the near future.
The main drawbacks of t h i s source are the absence of a cold converter and the high transmission losses (550) of the long guide system for
UCNwhich are piped up from the core region a l l the way t o the experiments. These drawbacks are avoided with two alternative source types discussed i n the following section.
(b) Superthermal He source: This source type has been proposed by Golub and
Pendlebury
/5/and realized for the f i r s t time a t the
ILL/6/ as shavn on fig.3. This novel
UCNsource type uses 10 a neutrons which are scattered down t o r e s t i n liquid ~e~ a f t e r creation of a phonon with the right energy and momentum. The probability t h a t a UCN produced i n t h i s way is l o s t by absorption of an appropriate phonon o r by scattering of a quasi-particle is very small a t the operating temperature of 0.5 K of the ILL source.
Therefore, UCN densities can build up i n an accumulation mode. With the existing source on the cold beam H I 7 densities of the order of 10'
UCNare expected inside the source provided that losses on the container walls and due t o He3 impurities are kept low. The actual He container is a 3 m long internally electropolished stainless s t e e l tube of 67 mm inner dia- meter which l e t s the 10 a neutrons enter a t one end through an UCN t o t a l l y refelcting 0.5 mm stainless s t e e l window. I t i s closed a t i t s other end during the a c c m l a t i o n phase by a f l a p valve which can be operated from- outside. The He4 a t 0.5 K is purified from ~e~ t o a fraction of about I0
l o .This source is clearly best adapted f o r experiments working i n a storage
mode l i k e the E M experiment. Up t o now a density of only
7UCN has
been actually detected mainly because of the low transmission of the cryo-
genic A 1 windows and the related gaps. I t is foreseen t o improve i n the
near future the UCN extraction system and the storage time of the He
container by a coating with Beryllium.
cal guide w i l l be installed (fig.4) which extracts neutrons directly from the cold converter with an expected gain factor of about 50 compared t o a thermal conver- t e r .
Aguide with a radius of curvature of 13 m traverses the swimming pool and feeds partly a Steyerl turbine with
50 m s ' where they are transformed into
,.v*.. '.c(.."UCN,
partly it supplies an intense beam of very cold neutrons. The transmission
d..n - 4 *-
losses w i l l be by a factor of 3 - 5 less
severe using a turbine in combination
7-with a 50 m s-' guide. Therefore the d
overall gainfactor compared t o the
3.0 W'Ooriginal PN5 performances w i l l amount t o
about 200. This system makes f u l l profit of the HFR and, in addition, is much less sensitive t o deterioration with time. I t i s based on a long r e a l ex- perience. The guide and the turbine are designed and manufactured by A. Steyerl's group i n Munich and w i l l be installed a t
ILL i n 1985. FIG.4 Vertical UCN guide and
turbine Table
2gives a comparative information on
the three source types.
TABLE 2: Comparison of the different
UCNsources a t ILL Unperturbed thermal flux
a t the nosefof the thim- ble n s '
Velocity of useful neutrons m s
steady UQi2
measured flux n un s potential measured stored UCN
density in g
Last but not least it should be mentioned that the reactor can be seen as a special f a c i l i t y for electron antineutrino experiments and that the neutron interferometer is an ILL f a c i l i t y in the sense of t h i s report. Both subjects have been discussed i n d e t a i l earlier.
Vertical guide on the modified cold source and turbine (1 985)
4.5~10"
50 4.5
2PN5 (1 977)
room temperature converter
6x10"
5
45
Helium source on HI 7
(1982)
2 . 2 ~ 1 0 ' ~
500 3
$1 00 0.2-0.3
10
$100 expected
1 with
-teff =50s 100-200 times the 10 with
T =50s values of
100 with {E =5OOs PN5
JOURNAL DE PHYSIQUE
References
/ I / Commissariat B 13Energie Atomique 1971 BIST
No165, December, and 1972 BIST No 166, January.
/2/
Inst. Laue-Langevin 1983, Neutron Bem F a c i l i t i e s a t the High Flwr Reactor available f o r Users; ILL, i n t e r n a l report.
/3/ Mampe
(W.)and Ageron (P.), I n s t . of Phys. Conf. Ser. (1978) 42, 148.
/4/