{"paper":{"title":"Identifying Neutron Sources using Recoil and Time-of-Flight Spectroscopy","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"A Bayesian protocol identifies single and dual neutron sources from spectra at over 4 sigma significance using only about 1000 events.","cross_cats":["nucl-ex","physics.app-ph","physics.data-an"],"primary_cat":"physics.ins-det","authors_text":"David Breitenmoser, Ricardo Lopez, Sara A. Pozzi, Shaun D. Clarke","submitted_at":"2025-12-10T19:57:05Z","abstract_excerpt":"Neutron-source identification is central to nuclear physics and its applications, from planetary science to nuclear security, yet direct source discrimination from measured neutron spectra remains fundamentally elusive. Here, we introduce a Bayesian protocol that directly infers source ensembles from measured neutron spectra by combining full-spectrum template matching with probabilistic evidence evaluation. Applying this protocol to recoil and time-of-flight spectroscopy, we recover single- and two-source configurations with strong statistical significance ($>\\!\\!4\\sigma$) at event counts as "},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"Applying this protocol to recoil and time-of-flight spectroscopy, we recover single- and two-source configurations with strong statistical significance (>4σ) at event counts as low as ∼10^3.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The pre-built spectral templates accurately represent the true neutron energy distributions from the sources being identified, and the Bayesian evidence calculation properly handles all relevant uncertainties and background contributions.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"A Bayesian protocol identifies single- and two-source neutron configurations from spectra with greater than 4 sigma significance at event counts as low as 1000.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"A Bayesian protocol identifies single and dual neutron sources from spectra at over 4 sigma significance using only about 1000 events.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"74e807886e3dbb66f625c5665edb3efa19519dcfa389970ebbff3683ecb9c745"},"source":{"id":"2512.10044","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"44386383-3521-4d06-81a0-94022bbe27eb","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-16T22:55:46.361393Z","strongest_claim":"Applying this protocol to recoil and time-of-flight spectroscopy, we recover single- and two-source configurations with strong statistical significance (>4σ) at event counts as low as ∼10^3.","one_line_summary":"A Bayesian protocol identifies single- and two-source neutron configurations from spectra with greater than 4 sigma significance at event counts as low as 1000.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The pre-built spectral templates accurately represent the true neutron energy distributions from the sources being identified, and the Bayesian evidence calculation properly handles all relevant uncertainties and background contributions.","pith_extraction_headline":"A Bayesian protocol identifies single and dual neutron sources from spectra at over 4 sigma significance using only about 1000 events."},"references":{"count":70,"sample":[{"doi":"","year":null,"title":"(see Supplemental Material [33]). To demonstrate the robustness and generalization capability of these tem- plates, the source position and source casing were deliber- ately varied between the templat","work_id":"ce44c15d-cf7a-4a31-aa12-e32c6a2375af","ref_index":1,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2008,"title":"H. Abele, The neutron. Its properties and basic inter- actions, Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics60, 1 (2008)","work_id":"f716630b-84cb-41f3-b9f8-9cdcc213a8d6","ref_index":2,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2020,"title":"A. Pietropaolo, M. Angelone, R. Bedogni, N. Colonna, A. J. Hurd, A. Khaplanov, F. Murtas, M. Pillon, F. Piscitelli, E. M. Schooneveld, and K. Zeitelhack, Neu- tron detection techniques fromµeV to GeV,","work_id":"f4241f2b-eeee-469e-8348-631509246810","ref_index":3,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":2002,"title":"I. Mitrofanov, D. Anfimov, A. Kozyrev, M. Litvak, A. Sanin, V. Tret’yakov, A. Krylov, V. Shvetsov, W. Boynton, C. Shinohara, D. Hamara, and R. S. Saun- ders, Maps of subsurface hydrogen from the High ","work_id":"94327050-efb9-4d09-9da6-73a015d345ed","ref_index":4,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false},{"doi":"","year":1998,"title":"W. C. Feldman, S. Maurice, A. B. Binder, B. L. Bar- raclough, R. C. Elphic, and D. J. Lawrence, Fluxes of fast and epithermal neutrons from lunar prospector: Ev- idence for water ice at the lunar pole","work_id":"f7ffff59-6e9d-4a83-81da-80d0de94863e","ref_index":5,"cited_arxiv_id":"","is_internal_anchor":false}],"resolved_work":70,"snapshot_sha256":"c7ad9aa1199514ae3456b36939906fbc690b1ee975a51f722e85b408e638892b","internal_anchors":2},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":2,"snapshot_sha256":"2e2be459ce61a391124f8bb4ecf6892551a209229bf65011fd7fe6521932eb6f"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}