Measurement of Muon-induced Neutron Production at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory

Abstract

Solar, terrestrial, and supernova neutrino experiments are subject to muon-induced radioactive backgrounds. The China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL), with its unique advantage of a 2400 m rock coverage and long distance from nuclear power plants, is ideal for MeV-scale neutrino experiments. Using a 1-ton prototype detector of the Jinping Neutrino Experiment (JNE), we detected 343 high-energy cosmic-ray muons and (7.86$\pm$3.97) muon-induced neutrons from an 820.28-day dataset at the first phase of CJPL (CJPL-I). Based on the muon-induced neutrons, we measured the corresponding muon-induced neutron yield in a liquid scintillator to be $(3.44\pm 1.86_{stat.}\pm 0.76_{syst.})\times 10^{-4}{\mu }^{-1}{\mathrm{g}}^{-1}\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^2$ at an average muon energy of \SI{340}{GeV}. We provided the first study for such neutron background at CJPL. A global fit including this measurement shows a power-law coefficient of (0.75$\pm$0.02) for the dependence of the neutron yield at the liquid scintillator on muon energy.

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• The China Jinping Underground Laboratory and its Early Science
• Limits on light WIMPs from the CDEX-1 experiment with a p-type point-contact germanium detector at the China Jingping Underground Laboratory
• First dark matter search results from the PandaX-I experiment
• Muon Flux Measurement at China Jinping Underground Laboratory
• Design and analysis of a 1-ton prototype of the Jinping Neutrino Experiment
• Geoneutrinos at Jinping: Flux prediction and oscillation analysis

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Solar neutrino physics
• Performance of the 1-ton Prototype Neutrino Detector at CJPL-I
• Mountain muon tomography using a liquid scintillator detector
• Study of neutron production for 360 GeV cosmic muons