Response Characterization for the Hydrogen-based Liquid Scintillation Detector EJ309

Liquid scintillation detectors have shown promise as neutron detectors for characterizing special nuclear materials in many verification contexts. In particular, EJ309 is attractive because it has a higher flash point than other liquids, making it more convenient for field applications. In this work, we present neutron response matrices for cylindrical five- by-five- and three-by-three-inch EJ309 detectors. A white neutron stream, obtained by the bombardment of 27Al with 7.44-MeV deuterons at the Edwards Accelerator facility at Ohio University, was incident on the face of the detectors. Detected neutrons were sorted by time-of-flight and pulse-height into 100-keV energy bins and 50-keVee light-output bins. The resulting response matrices will be useful for neutron spectrum unfolding, and for obtaining the relation between deposited energy and resulting light-output for use in Monte Carlo simulations. In the paper, we present the measured response matrices, and use them to evaluate simulations using three functional forms for the relation between deposited energy and resulting scintillation light output.