~(13)C(α, n)~(16)O background in a liquid scintillator based neutrino experiment

α from natural radioactivity may interact with a nucleus and emit a neutron. The reaction introduces the background to the liquid scintillator(LS) based neutrino experiments. In the LS detector, α comes from 238 U,232Th,and 210 Po decay chains. For Gadolinium-doped LS(Gd-LS) detector, α also comes from 227 Ac. The nucleus 13 C is a natural component of Carbon which is rich in the LS. The background rate and spectrum should be subtracted carefully from the neutrino candidates. This paper describes the calculation of neutron yield and spectrum with uncertainty estimated. The results are relevant for many existing neutrino experiments and future LS or Gd-LS based experiments.     

Study of Tyvek reflectivity in water

Tyvek is widely used as the inner lining material of water Cherenkov detectors. Therefore, information about its optical properties plays an important role in the simulation and reconstruction of particles passing through water Cherenkov detectors. In this paper, a water tank experiment is performed to study the Tyvek reflectivity in water. The so-called UNIFIED model, which is an optical model of surface reflection in Geant4, is adopted to describe the Tyvek reflectivity. Two key optical parameters are obtained from a comparison between the measured data and a Monte Carlo simulation.