Dead-Time Correction of Pulsed Neutron Source Experiments with the Backward Extrapolation Method

This paper introduces a novel procedure to correct pulsed neutron source experimental data for dead-time effects. The procedure is based on the application of the backward extrapolation method to the reaction rate value in each time interval (bin) of the neutron counts distribution as a function of time. The theoretical framework has been successfully applied to the experimental data (timestamps) from the YALINA Thermal facility driven by a pulsed D-D neutron source. Dead-time effects may have more than 500 pcm (1 pcm=1 E-5) impact on the effective multiplication factor calculated by the area method. (authors)