[en] The development of high-speed, high-performance gamma-ray spectroscopy algorithms is critical to the success of many automated threat detection systems. In response to this need a proliferation of such algorithms has taken place. With this proliferation comes the necessary and non-trivial task of validation. There is (and always will be) insufficient experimental data to determine performance of spectroscopy algorithms over the relevant factor space at any reasonable precision. In the case of gamma-ray spectroscopy, there are hundreds of radioisotopes of interest, which may come in arbitrary admixtures, there are many materials of unknown quantity, which may be found in the intervening space between the source and the detection system, and there are also irregular variations in the detector systems themselves. All of these factors and more should be explored to determine algorithm/system performance. This paper describes a statistical framework for the performance estimation and comparison of gamma-ray spectroscopy algorithms. The framework relies heavily on data of increasing levels of artificiality to sufficiently cover the factor space. At each level rigorous statistical methods are employed to validate performance estimates.

[en] Total photofission cross sections for 238U, 235U, 233U, 237Np, 232Th, and natPb have been measured simultaneously, using tagged photons in the energy range Egamma=0.17-3.84 GeV. This was the first experiment performed using the Photon Tagging Facility in Hall B at Jefferson Lab. Our results show that the photofission cross section for 238U relative to that for 237Np is about 80%, implying the presence of important processes that compete with fission. We also observe that the relative photofission cross sections do not depend strongly on the incident photon energy over this entire energy range. If we assume that for 237Np the photofission probability is equal to unity, we observe a significant shadowing effect starting below 1.5 GeV

[en] Compton backscattering polarimetry provides a fast measurement of the polarization of an electron beam in a storage ring. Since the method is non-destructive, the polarization of the electrons can be monitored during internal target experiments. At NIKHEF a Compton polarimeter has been constructed to measure the polarization of the longitudinally polarized electrons stored in the AmPS ring. First results obtained with the polarimeter, the first Compton polarimeter to measure the polarization of a stored longitudinally polarized electron beam, are presented in this paper