Reconstructing the direction of reactor antineutrinos via electron scattering in Gd-doped water Cherenkov detectors
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- 作者：D. Hellfelda ; dhellfeld@berkeley.edu" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author ; A. Bernsteinb ; S. Dazeleyb ; dazeley2@llnl.gov" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author ; C. Mariannoc
- 关键词：Reactor antineutrinos ; Water Cherenkov detector ; Electron scattering ; Directionality
- 刊名：Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
- 出版年：2017
- 出版时间：1 January 2017
- 年：2017
- 卷：841
- 期：Complete
- 页码：130-138
- 全文大小：1216 K
文摘
The potential of elastic antineutrino-electron scattering in a Gd-doped water Cherenkov detector to determine the direction of a nuclear reactor antineutrino flux was investigated using the recently proposed WATCHMAN antineutrino experiment as a baseline model. The expected scattering rate was determined assuming a 13-km standoff from a 3.758-GWt light water nuclear reactor and the detector response was modeled using a Geant4-based simulation package. Background was estimated via independent simulations and by scaling published measurements from similar detectors. Background contributions were estimated for solar neutrinos, misidentified reactor-based inverse beta decay interactions, cosmogenic radionuclides, water-borne radon, and gamma rays from the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), detector walls, and surrounding rock. We show that with the use of low background PMTs and sufficient fiducialization, water-borne radon and cosmogenic radionuclides pose the largest threats to sensitivity. Directional sensitivity was then analyzed as a function of radon contamination, detector depth, and detector size. The results provide a list of experimental conditions that, if satisfied in practice, would enable antineutrino directional reconstruction at 3σ significance in large Gd-doped water Cherenkov detectors with greater than 10-km standoff from a nuclear reactor.