A system for differential neutron scattering experiments in the energy range from 0.5 to 20 MeV

In order to aid in the improvement of the high energy neutron differential scattering cross-section data, scattering experiments were performed using a collimated source of pulsed neutrons with energies up to 20 MeV from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Linear Accelerator. An array of proton recoil detectors surrounding a sample placed at 30.1 m from the source measures the scattered flux using time-of-flight (TOF) methods. A state of the art digital data acquisition system is used to collect the data from the detector array and stream the digitized data to disk. Software was developed to perform pulse shape analysis, multi-channel analyzer functions, and to generate TOF spectra and angular dependent scattered neutron distributions. Scattering measurements were performed on carbon and molybdenum and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using various nuclear data libraries.