Liquid-organic time projection chamber for detecting low energy antineutrinos

Abstract

The MeV region of antineutrino energy is of special interest for physics research and for monitoring nuclear nonproliferation. Whereas liquid scintillation detectors are typically used to detect the Inverse Beta Decay (IBD), it has recently been proposed to detect it with a liquid-organic Time Projection Chamber, which could allow a full reconstruction of the particle tracks of the IBD final state. We present the first comprehensive simulation-based study of the expected signatures. Their unequivocal signature could enable a background-minimized detection of electron antineutrinos using information on energy, location and direction of all final state particles. We show that the positron track reflects the antineutrino's vertex. It can also be used to determine the initial neutrino energy. In addition, we investigate the possibility to reconstruct the antineutrino direction on an event-by-event basis by the energy deposition of the neutron-induced proton recoils. Our simulations indicate that this could be a promising approach which should be further studied through experiments with a detector prototype.

arXiv commentRevision for submission to Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A (NIM A)

References in corpus (24)

• The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator
• Precision Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters with KamLAND
• The angular distribution of the reaction ${\bar{\nu }}_e+p\to e^{+}+n$
• Design and Construction of the MicroBooNE Detector
• The XENON100 Dark Matter Experiment
• The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Experiment
• The ArgoNeuT Detector in the NuMI Low-Energy beam line at Fermilab
• First search for short-baseline neutrino oscillations at HFIR with PROSPECT
• First results on ProtoDUNE-SP liquid argon time projection chamber performance from a beam test at the CERN Neutrino Platform
• The Detector System of The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment
• Comprehensive geoneutrino analysis with Borexino
• Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), Far Detector Technical Design Report, Volume II: DUNE Physics
• Measurement of Longitudinal Electron Diffusion in Liquid Argon
• The Physics and Nuclear Nonproliferation Goals of WATCHMAN: A WAter CHerenkov Monitor for ANtineutrinos
• Antineutrino monitoring for the Iranian heavy water reactor
• Antineutrino monitoring of spent nuclear fuel
• Accurate Measurement of the Electron Antineutrino Yield of U-235 Fissions from the STEREO Experiment with 119 Days of Reactor-On Data
• SANDD: A directional antineutrino detector with segmented 6Li-doped pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator
• Neutrino-based tools for nuclear verification and diplomacy in North Korea
• Dual-Phase Liquid Xenon Detectors for Dark Matter Searches
• Organic Liquid TPCs for Neutrino Physics
• Studying Neutrino Directionality with Double Chooz
• Liquid Scintillator Time Projection Chamber Concept
• A Tetramethylsilane TPC with Cherenkov light readout and 3D reconstruction