Speaker
Description
Simulating the thermal neutron cross section of complex systems is a complicated and time-consuming task: in the thermal energy range, neutron cross sections are determined by the chemical and structural properties of materials, and cannot be accurately approximated by summing the contributions of isolated atoms (e.g. free gas model). Moreover, additional properties of materials, such as nanoscale structural features, as well as magnetic properties, can contribute to the complexity of accurate modelling.
For these reasons, neutron transport codes must rely on thermal neutron libraries, which are currently only available for a handful of materials, and primarily developed for fission, fusion, or industrial applications. Therefore, there remains a need for specialized cross sections in multiple fields that rely on neutron transport simulations, such as medical physics, neutron imaging, radiation shielding and radioprotection.
Here, some case studies relevant to medical applications and radioprotection are presented, ranging from complex hydrogen-based molecules, boron neutron capture therapy moderator compounds, to diatomic molecules abundant in air, with the goal of comparing these specialised models to the traditional free-gas approximation, commonly used in neutron transport simulations.
