Study on Calibrating Neutron Velocity Selector of Small Angle Neutron Scattering Instrument

Neutron velocity selector is widely used on neutron scattering instruments as key component. To calibrate it (wavelength and wavelength-resolution-rate measurement), it is necessary to design calibration instrument and develop calibration technique. Based on small angle neutron scattering instrument (SANS) at China Advanced Research Reactor (CARR), instrument structure was designed and instrument parameters were determined. Count loss influence on measurement of wavelength resolution rate (WRR) was studied for the first time. Measurement error of WRR is decided by product of dead time and Gauss peak count rate (GPCR) and increases with increasing GPCR for the same dead time. In order to ensure WRR measurement error less than 0.9%, upper limits of GPCR for detector adjoining chopper and detector far away from chopper are less than 10000[s-1] and 2500[s-1] respectively. According to upper limits of GPCR, floor limit of total measurement time for each spectrum is calculated to be 6.66 minutes.