Cosmogenic neutron production at Daya Bay

Abstract

Neutrons produced by cosmic ray muons are an important background for underground experiments studying neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter, and other rare-event signals. A measurement of the neutron yield in the three different experimental halls of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment at varying depth is reported. The neutron yield in Daya Bay's liquid scintillator is measured to be $Y_n=(10.26\pm 0.86)\times 10^{-5}$, $(10.22\pm 0.87)\times 10^{-5}$, and $(17.03\pm 1.22)\times 10^{-5}{\mu }^{-1}$g${}^{-1}$cm${}^2$ at depths of 250, 265, and 860 meters-water-equivalent. These results are compared to other measurements and the simulated neutron yield in Fluka and Geant4. A global fit including the Daya Bay measurements yields a power law coefficient of $0.77\pm 0.03$ for the dependence of the neutron yield on muon energy.

arXiv comment13 pages, 13 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Suppression of Cosmic Muon Spallation Backgrounds in Liquid Scintillator Detectors Using Convolutional Neural Networks
• Neutral-current background induced by atmospheric neutrinos at large liquid-scintillator detectors: II. Methodology for in situ measurements
• Feasibility and physics potential of detecting ${}^8$B solar neutrinos at JUNO
• Measurement of Muon-induced Neutron Production at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory
• Cosmogenic Neutron Production at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
• Characterization of plastic scintillator bars using fast neutrons from D-D and D-T reactions
• Neutron Tagging Can Greatly Reduce Spallation Backgrounds in Super-Kamiokande
• Measurement of Muon-induced High-energy Neutrons from Rock in an Underground Gd-doped Water Detector
• Study of neutron production for 360 GeV cosmic muons
• Neutron source-based event reconstruction algorithm in large liquid scintillator detectors
• A Decade of Discoveries by the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment