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NeutralNet: an application of deep neural networks to pulse shape discrimination for use with accelerator-based neutron sources

2025· article· en· W4410230291 on OpenAlexafffund
Richard Garnett, Ariel Amsellem, Arun Persaud, Alex Miller, M. B. Smith, Soo Hyun Byun

Bibliographic record

VenueApplied Radiation and Isotopes · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldPhysics and Astronomy
TopicNuclear Physics and Applications
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsNeutronArtificial neural networkPulse (music)Nuclear engineeringComputer scienceDeep neural networksNeutron sourceNuclear physicsPhysicsArtificial intelligenceEngineeringTelecommunicationsDetector

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Recent works have implemented machine learning based solutions for many complex classification tasks including pulse shape discrimination in radiation detection. The present work aims to advance the application of machine learning to pulse shape discrimination in neutron detection. A machine learning based neutron-gamma discrimination technique is investigated for various neutron energy distributions produced from DD, DT, (α,n), and spontaneous fission neutron sources. Comprehensive investigations on the training data generation techniques, the impact of the PMT bias, and the discrimination performance are conducted. With the increase of the PMT bias voltage, the neutron classification performance peaked at 1500 with 81 % of validation neutrons being identified at a false positive rate of 1E-6 while the further bias increase led to a notable degradation in performance. The unsatisfactory classification performance encountered when training off of one neutron source type and classifying neutrons from the other source types was greatly improved with the application of the transfer learning techniques. The remaining variation in the performance was accounted for by the energy dependence of the neutron classification. It was demonstrated that at the 1E-6 FPR specificity level, the events within the region of overlap for neutron and photon populations could be separated, down to a detected energy of 30 keVee. An overall intrinsic neutron detection efficiency of 12.5 % was achieved for the 252 Cf neutron source at a false positive rate of 1E-6.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.845
Threshold uncertainty score0.477

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.009
GPT teacher head0.246
Teacher spread0.237 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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