Anna Ferrari

The FLUKA Monte Carlo Radiation Transport and Interaction code package is widely used to simulate the interaction of particles with matter in a variety of fields, including high energy physics, space radiation, medical applications, radiation protection and shielding assessments, accelerator studies, astrophysical studies and well logging. This paper gives a brief overview of the FLUKA program and describes recent developments, in particular, improvements in the modelling of particle interactions and transport are described in detail. In addition, an overview of selected applications is given.

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.

The planned Multipurpose Hybrid Research Reactor for High-Tech Applications (or MYRRHA) research reactor in Mol, Belgium, aims to demonstrate efficient transmutation of high-level waste and associated accelerator-driven systems technology. The system is based on a lead-bismuth eutectic cooled reactor, working both in critical and in subcritical operation modes. The neutrons needed to sustain fission in the subcritical mode are produced via spallation processes by a 600-MeV less than or equal to 4 mA proton beam, which is provided by a linear accelerator and hits a lead-bismuth eutectic spallation target located inside the reactor core. In order to assess the main shielding problems, a method based on the combined use of the two Monte Carlo codes MCNP and FLUKA was developed, with the goal to perform detailed analyses of both the radiation fields due to the system in operation and the coupled residual radiation due to the activated materials. As a result, neutron and photon fluences as well as prompt and residual ambient dose equivalent rates were evaluated. In addition, an activation database for many of the structural materials was built.

In this paper, we report the measurement of the neutron radiation hardness of custom Silicon Photomultipliers arrays (SiPMs) manufactured by three companies: Hamamatsu (Japan), AdvanSiD (Italy) and SensL (Ireland). These custom SiPMs consist of a 2×3 array of 6×6 mm² monolithic cells with pixel sizes of respectively 50 μm (Hamamatsu and SensL) and 30 μm (AdvanSiD). A sample from each vendor has been exposed to neutrons generated by the Elbe Positron Source facility (Dresden), up to a total fluence of ~ 8.5 × 10¹¹ n_1 MeV/cm². Test results show that the dark current increases almost linearly with the neutron fluence. The room temperature annealing was quantified by measuring the dark current two months after the irradiation test. The dependence of the dark current on the device temperature and on the applied bias have been also evaluated.

EPJ Web of Conferences, open-access proceedings in physics and astronomy