The array for investigations of EAS neutron component

Abstract

The neutron component of EAS has not been practically studied for many years. Creation of the neutron detector arrays PRISMA-32 and PRISMA-YBJ demonstrated the effectiveness of such investigations. It is important to underline that recording the EAS neutron component is carried out over the whole array area. Development of a new larger scale neutron detector array (URAN) in MEPhI will continue these studies. During the construction of the URAN array, a new design of en-detectors based on the scintillator with natural boron and new electronics was developed. The use of new electronics with a switchable sampling rate allows one to reach EAS fast timing accuracy up to 10 ns. The en-detectors of the URAN are located on the roofs of the buildings. The sensitive area of each detector is 0.36 m 2 , while the array's starting area is ∼ 10 3 m 2 . Total number of the initial array detectors is 72. They are subdivided into 6 independent clusters each of 12 en-detectors, connected with the central data acquisition station.