Open Access

Petar Žugec, Nicola Colonna, Damir Bosnar, Sebastian Altstadt, Józef Andrzejewski, Laurent Audouin, Massimo Barbagallo, Vicente Bécares, František Bečvář, Fabio Belloni, Eric Berthoumieux, Jonathan Billowes, Vittorio Boccone, Markus Brugger, Marco Calviani, Francisco Calviño Tavares, Daniel Cano-Ott, Carlos Carrapiço, Francesco Cerutti, Enrico Chiaveri, Michael Chin, Guillem Pere Cortés Rossell, Miguel Antonio Cortés-Giraldo, Maria Diakaki, César Domingo-Pardo, Rugard Dressler, Ignacio Durán, Nataliia Dzysiuk, Christos Eleftheriadis, Alfredo Ferrari, Kevin Fraval, Srinivasan Ganesan, Aczel Regino García Ríos, Giuseppe Giubrone, María Belén Gómez Hornillos, Isabel Maria Ferro Gonçalves, Enrique Miguel González Romero, Erich Griesmayer, Carlos Guerrero Sánchez, Frank Gunsing, Perumal Gurusamy, Stephan Heinitz, David Jenkins, Erwin Jericha, Yacine Kadi, Franz Käppeler, Dimitri Karadimos, Nikolay Kivel, Paul Koehler, Michael Kokkoris, Milan Krtička, Jiří Kroll, Christoph Langer, Claudia Lederer, Helmut Leeb, Lou Sai Leong, Sergio Lo Meo, Roberto Losito, Athanasios Manousos, Justyna Marganiec, Trinitario Martínez, Cristian Massimi, Pierfrancesco Mastinu, Mario Mastromarco, AKM Moinul Haque Meaze, Emilio Mendoza Cembranos, Alberto Mengoni, Paolo Maria Milazzo, Federica Mingrone, Mihail Mirea, Willy Mondalaers, Carlos Paradela Dobarro, Andreas Pavlik, Jarosław Perkowski, Arjan J. M. Plompen, Javier Praena, José Manuel Quesada Molina, Thomas Rauscher, René Reifarth, Albert Riego Pérez, Faustin Laurenţiu Roman, Carlo Rubbia, Raul Sarmento, Alok Saxena, Peter Schillebeeckx, Stefan Schmidt, Dorothea Schumann, Giuseppe Tagliente, José Luis Taı́n Enríquez, Diego Tarrío Vilas, Laurent Tassan-Got, Andrea Tsinganis, Stanislav Valenta, Gianni Vannini, Vincenzo Variale, Pedro Vaz, Alberto Ventura, Roberto Versaci, Mark J. Vermeulen, Vasilis Vlachoudis, Rosa Vlastou, Anton Wallner, Timothy Ware, Mario Weigand, Christina Weiß, Tobias Wright

• The neutron sensitivity of the C6D6 detector setup used at n_TOF facility for capture measurements has been studied by means of detailed GEANT4 simulations. A realistic software replica of the entire n_TOF experimental hall, including the neutron beam line, sample, detector supports and the walls of the experimental area has been implemented in the simulations. The simulations have been analyzed in the same manner as experimental data, in particular by applying the Pulse Height Weighting Technique. The simulations have been validated against a measurement of the neutron background performed with a natC sample, showing an excellent agreement above 1 keV. At lower energies, an additional component in the measured natC yield has been discovered, which prevents the use of natC data for neutron background estimates at neutron energies below a few hundred eV. The origin and time structure of the neutron background have been derived from the simulations. Examples of the neutron background for two different samples are demonstrating the important role of accurate simulations of the neutron background in capture cross-section measurements.