Spectral distortion due to scattered cold neutrons in beryllium filter

Polycrystalline beryllium filters are used to discriminate the cold neutrons from the thermal neutrons with energies above Bragg cut-off energy. The cold neutron scattering cross section is very small, but the remaining cross section is not zero. Then the neutrons scattered once from the filter in the cold neutron energy region have chance of impinging on the outlet of filter. Those neutrons are almost upscattered and develop into thermal neutrons; thus the discriminated cold neutrons include a small spectral distortion due to the thermal neutrons. In the present work we have evaluated the effect on the cold neutron spectrum due to the repeatedly scattered and transmitted neutrons by using a Monte Carlo calculation method. (author)