A complete optical model for liquid-scintillator detectors

Abstract

Liquid scintillator (LS) is widely used in various neutrino oscillation experiments, in particular, the reactor neutrino experiments. The complex absorption and re-emission processes of optical photons are known to be an important source of the non-linear and non-uniform response of LS detectors. Precise simulation of light propagation in LS is highly desirable to model the detector response and reduce the systematic errors. In this paper, we develop a novel optical model which can completely deal with the competitive photon absorption and subsequent re-emission processes of the LS components. It allows to directly plug in the laboratory measurements of the LS components to model any LS composition. Extensive measurements have been performed to obtain the essential optical parameters for this model. We validate the model with a bench-top experiment featuring a small LS volume. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for any given detector geometry, this model provides the capability of optimizing the LS recipe to maximize the light collection. It is valuable for designing future LS-based detectors and improving the agreement between Monte Carlo and data for current neutrino experiments.

arXiv comment17 pages, 13 figures and 1 table; to be published in Nuclear Inst. and Methods in Physics Research, A

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• Optimization of the JUNO liquid scintillator composition using a Daya Bay antineutrino detector
• COCOA: a compact Compton camera for astrophysical observation of MeV-scale gamma rays
• Determine Energy Nonlinearity and Resolution of $e^{\pm }$ and $\gamma$ in Liquid Scintillator Detectors by A Universal Energy Response Model
• Sub-GeV Dark Matter Direct Detection with Neutrino Observatories
• Cosmic muons as PMT and SiPM detector background signals