Calibration of the BC-523A capture-gated liquid scintillation detector

The BC-523 A detector is a boron-10-loaded liquid scintillation detector that is sensitive to not only fast neutrons and gamma rays, but also to thermal neutrons. This detector has recently attracted the attention of researchers because it has shown promise for neutron spectroscopy. Several efforts have been made to accurately characterize this detector for several neutron and gamma-ray energies. In this paper, we show that neutron capture pulses can be distinguished from neutron and gamma-ray scattering pulses by using an offline digital pulse shape discrimination method based on charge integration. In this work, the BC-523A is further being characterized to accurately determine its potential for neutron spectroscopy applications. This work has applications in fields such as nuclear safeguards, nuclear nonproliferation, and national security. (authors)