C2 Secondary Neutrons at Laser-driven Proton Sources

 Laser-driven particle acceleration is a growing technique that enables, by exploiting the interaction of a high power laser pulse with matter, the production and acceleration of bunches of particles (such as light ions and electrons) to several tens of MeV, on a small time and space scale. Such mechanism is being studied for its potential future application in particle acceleration for both research and therapy. As a byproduct, whenever laser-driven particles interact with the beam delivery and shaping apparatus, a shower of secondary pulsed radiation (mainly composed of neutrons and photons) appears. Such secondary pulsed fields need to be characterized and measured, both for radiation protection purposes and investigation of the primary source features. However, most of nowadays commercially available online neutron detectors fail when exposed to such intense bunches of radiation. This project focuses on the characterization by means of Monte Carlo simulations and subsequent measurements of the secondary neutron fields expected at the Laser-driven Ion source, LION (Centre for Advanced Laser Application, Garching)