Open Access

Victor Babiano Suarez, Jorge Lerendegui-Marco, Javier Balibrea Correa, Luis Caballero Ontanaya, David Calvo, Ion Ladarescu, César Domingo-Pardo, Francisco Calviño Tavares, Adrià Casanovas Hoste, Ariel Tarifeño-Saldivia, Victor Alcayne, Carlos Guerrero Sánchez, María de los Ángeles Millán Callado, María Teresa Rodrı́guez-González, Massimo Barbagallo, Oliver Aberle, Simone Amaducci, Józef Andrzejewski, Laurent Audouin, Michael Bacak, Samuel Bennett, Eric Berthoumieux, Jonathan Billowes, Damir Bosnar, Adam Brown, Maurizio Busso, Manuel Caamaño, Marco Calviani, Daniel Cano-Ott, Francesco Cerutti, Enrico Chiaveri, Nicola Colonna, Guillem Pere Cortés Rossell, Miguel Antonio Cortés-Giraldo, Luigi Cosentino, Sergio Cristallo, Lucia Anna Damone, Paul John Davies, Maria Diakaki, Mirco Dietz, Rugard Dressler, Quentin Ducasse, Emmeric Dupont, Ignacio Durán, Zinovia Eleme, Beatriz Fernández Domínguez, Alfredo Ferrari, Paolo Finocchiaro, Valter Furman, Kathrin Göbel, Ruchi Garg, Aleksandra Gawlik, Simone Gilardoni, Isabel Maria Ferro Gonçalves, Enrique Miguel González Romero, Frank Gunsing, Hideo Harada, Stephan Heinitz, Jan Heyse, David Jenkins, Arnd Rudolf Junghans, Franz Käppeler, Yacine Kadi, Atsushi Kimura, Ingrid Knapova, Michael Kokkoris, Yuri N. Kopatch, Milan Krtička, Cem Deniz Kurtulgil, Claudia Lederer-Woods, Helmut Leeb, Sarah Jane Lonsdale, Daniela Macina, Alice Manna, Trinitario Martinez, Alessandro Masi, Cristian Massimi, Pierfrancesco Mastinu, Mario Mastromarco, Emilio Andrea Maugeri, Annamaria Mazzone, Emilio Mendoza Cembranos, Alberto Mengoni, Veatriki Michalopoulou, Paolo Maria Milazzo, Federica Mingrone, Javier Moreno-Soto, Agatino Musumarra, Alexandru Negret, Francisco Ogállar Ruiz, Andreea Oprea, Nikolas Patronis, Andreas Pavlik, Jarosław Perkowski, Luciano Piersanti, Cristina Petrone, Elisa Pirovano, José Ignacio Porras Sánchez, Javier Praena, José Manuel Quesada Molina, Diego Ramos Doval, Thomas Rauscher, René Reifarth, Dimitri Rochman, Carlo Rubbia, Marta Sabaté-Gilarte, Alok Saxena, Peter Schillebeeckx, Dorothea Schumann, Adhitya Sekhar, Alastair Gavin Smith, Nikolay V. Sosnin, Peter Sprung, Athanasios Stamatopoulos, Giuseppe Tagliente, José Luis Taı́n Enríquez, Laurent Tassan-Got, Th. Thomas, Pablo Torres-Sánchez, Andrea Tsinganis, Jiri Ulrich, Sebastian Urlaß, Stanislav Valenta, Gianni Vannini, Vincenzo Variale, Pedro Vaz, Alberto Ventura, Diego Vescovi, Vasilis Vlachoudis, Rosa Vlastou, Anton Wallner, Philip John Woods, Tobias Wright, Petar Žugec

• i-TED is an innovative detection system which exploits Compton imaging techniques to achieve a superior signal-to-background ratio in (n,γ) cross-section measurements using time-of-flight technique. This work presents the first experimental validation of the i-TED apparatus for high-resolution time-of-flight experiments and demonstrates for the first time the concept proposed for background rejection. To this aim both 197Au(n,γ) and 56Fe(n,γ) reactions were measured at CERN n\_TOF using an i-TED demonstrator based on only three position-sensitive detectors. Two \cds detectors were also used to benchmark the performance of i-TED. The i-TED prototype built for this study shows a factor of ∼3 higher detection sensitivity than state-of-the-art \cds detectors in the ∼10~keV neutron energy range of astrophysical interest. This paper explores also the perspectives of further enhancement in performance attainable with the final i-TED array consisting of twenty position-sensitive detectors and new analysis methodologies based on Machine-Learning techniques.