Monte Carlo aided design of the inner muon veto detectors for the Double Chooz experiment

TL;DR

This paper details the Monte Carlo simulation-based design of the inner muon veto detector for the Double Chooz neutrino experiment, achieving high muon rejection efficiency to reduce background noise.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo aided design process for the inner muon veto, optimizing photomultiplier tube configuration for maximum efficiency.

Findings

Achieved 99.978% muon rejection efficiency

Designed a detector with 78 PMTs

Implemented at the far detector site and planned for the near site

Abstract

The Double Chooz neutrino experiment aims to measure the last unknown neutrino mixing angle theta_13 using two identical detectors positioned at sites both near and far from the reactor cores of the Chooz nuclear power plant. To suppress correlated background induced by cosmic muons in the detectors, they are protected by veto detector systems. One of these systems is the inner muon veto. It is an active liquid scintillator based detector and instrumented with encapsulated photomultiplier tubes. In this paper we describe the Monte Carlo aided design process of the inner muon veto, that resulted in a detector configuration with 78 PMTs yielding an efficiency of 99.978 +- 0.004% for rejecting muon events and an efficiency of >98.98% for rejecting correlated events induced by muons. A veto detector of this design is currently used at the far detector site and will be built and incorporated as the muon identification system at the near site of the Double Chooz experiment.