Opaque and Gaseous Scintillation Detectors and Active Interrogation Techniques for Nuclear Security
Abstract: Present and future nuclear security challenges demand innovations in detection instrumentation and techniques. This talk will highlight an emerging approach to detecting ionizing radiation with opaque scintillators. By constraining scintillation photons to a small volume and extracting them using wavelength-shifting fibers, interaction topology can be reconstructed with excellent spatial resolution. Originally conceived for reactor neutrino detection, opaque scintillators can greatly relax the material doping constraints and be functionalized for more traditional nuclear security problems. I will also highlight our recent work in active interrogation, including the use of high-pressure gamma-blind He-4 scintillators and advanced techniques for extracting material signatures from medium- and low-resolution scintillators in high pile-up environments.
Bio: Igor Jovanovic received his B.S./M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zagreb and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, after which he served as a faculty member at Purdue University and Penn State University. He is currently a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Michigan. His research interests include advanced methods for ionizing radiation detection and applications of ultrafast lasers in nuclear science. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and a Fellow of Optica, and he serves on the editorial boards of Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A and Optics Letters.