Quick Shot

A poster presented by Thomas Eckert and August Gula, undergraduate physics students at Houghton College (shown here at the Omega Laser Facility Users Group 2015 Workshop) was named the outstanding presentation in the Education and Outreach: Undergraduate/High School Research session at the 57th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics. The poster discussed recent Monte Carlo simulations to understand the sensitivity of the detectors used in the neutron final-state measurements. The simulations were used to establish the absolute value of the ¹²C(n,2n)¹¹C cross section for incident neutron energies from 20 to 25 MeV. This nuclear reaction has a neutron-energy threshold of approximately 19 MeV and is being considered for use as an activation diagnostic in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions on OMEGA and at the National Ignition Facility.