Question for Andrea: Which Hydrogen should I use? I am using H_1 in this simulation and assumed that the energy loss was 50%, but the energy loss should be 100% shouldn’t it if it is a perfect elastic collision and the the neuron and hydrogen(proton) have ~ the same mass?
This break I have been working on making a new version of my code that works when the neutron is in a substance containing different elements like the scintillators used in DarkSide. This has taken some time and I have had to restructure much of the code but I learn a lot along the way.
I have produced plots of my first successful run. All the plots are with no varying scattering angle and no thermal walk (so the neutron is assumed to be absorbed immediately once thermal).
I am currently testing/debugging the varying angle and the thermal walk and will be done tonight.
Another issue is the run time. This version of the code takes about 5 minutes to run. This is because I have to choose what atom to collide with at each step. I wrote the code that accomplishes this extremely well, but it takes quite a long time. I am thinking of a better/faster way to do this without losing accuracy.
Something I do like are the trends in the data, they seem to make sense if the order of magnitude were correct. Also I like the the number of collisions are so discontinuous and linear. I expected this linearity from my previous simulation. The discontinuity is less obviously explain, but I believe this has to do with the fact if the neutron collides with H it loses half its energy.
Plan:
1. Debug thermal walk
2. Cut down runtime