The use of neutrons to probe formations has had a long history in well logging. The first neutron device appeared shortly after World War II. The initial application was to determine formation porosity. Currently, in addition to logging tools that detect neutrons in order to determine formation hydrogen content, there are tools which use pulsed neutrons to analyze the absorption rate of the emitted neutrons, and gamma ray spectroscopy tools which detect neutron-induced gamma rays to produce a limited chemical analysis of the formation. The key to understanding the responses of these tools is the interactions that are exploited. The purpose of this chapter is to describe these interactions in order to provide a basis for succeeding chapters.
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Ellis, D.V., Singer, J.M. (2007). Basic Neutron Physics for Logging Applications. In: Ellis, D.V., Singer, J.M. (eds) Well Logging for Earth Scientists. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4602-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4602-5_13
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