ED2-4

Neutron Imaging for Intermetallic Alloys using a Delay Line Current-Biased Kinetic-Inductance Detector

Dec.1 19:00-19:15 (Tokyo Time)

*Hiroaki Shishido1,2, The Dang Vu3, Kazuya Aizawa3, Kenji M. Kojima4,5, Tomio Koyama5, Kenichi Oikawa3, Masahide Harada3, Takayuki Oku3, Kazuhiko Soyama3, Shigeyuki Miyajima6, Mutsuo Hidaka7, Soh Y. Suzuki8, Manobu M. Tanaka9, Shuichi Kawamata2,5, Takekazu Ishida2,5

Department of Physics and Electronics, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University1

NanoSquare Research Institute, Osaka Prefecture University2

Materials and Life Science Division, J-PARC Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency3

Centre for Molecular and Materials Science, TRIUMF and Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia4

Division of Quantum and Radiation Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University5

Advanced ICT Research Institute, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology6

Advanced Industrial Science and Technology7

Computing Research Center, Applied Research Laboratory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)8

Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies, High Energy Accelerator

Research Organization (KEK) 9

Superconducting detectors are one of the most important superconducting applications [1]. We have been developing a unique superconducting neutron detector, called current-biased kinetic-inductance-detector (CB-KID) [2]. CB-KID comprises X and Y superconducting Nb meanderlines with a Nb ground plane and a 10B neutron conversion layer. An incident neutron is converted into two charged particles at the 10B layer, and one of them creates a hot spot simultaneously in the X and Y meanderlines. At hot spots, the local Cooper pair density is reduced temporary, and then pairs of voltage pulses are generated under DC-bias currents. Voltage pulses propagate toward both ends of the meanderlines as electromagnetic waves. Thus, high spatial resolution two-dimensional neutron transmission images can be reconstructed by using the delay-line method with only four channels. CB-KIDs can handle multi-hit events, and the detection-rate tolerance is estimated as high as a few tens MHz. Hence energy resolved neutron transmission measurements are available by the combination of CB-KID and pulsed neutron sources. We conducted neutron transmission imaging and transmission measurements for mixed metals, such as Sm-Sn alloy. Thanks to huge neutron absorption cross section of Sm, we can visualize distribution of Sm atoms in Sn block. We also confirmed resonance dips of Sm.

 This work is partially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) (No. 16H02450) from JSPS. The neutron irradiation experiments at the Materials and Life Science Experimental Facility (MLF) of the J- PARC were conducted under the support of MLF programs (No. 2020P0201).

[1] K. D. Irwin, Appl. Phys. Lett. 66, 1998 (1995); P. K. Day et al., Nature 425, 817 (2003); J. Zmuidzinas, Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 3, 169 (2012).
[2] H. Shishido et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 232601 (2015); H. Shishido et al., Phys. Rev. Appl. 10, 0440440 (2018); Y. Iizawa et al., Supercond. Sci. Technol. 32, 125009 (2019).

Keywords: Superconducting detector, Neutron imaging, CB-KID