Registration of reactor neutrinos with the highly segmented plastic scintillator detector DANSSino

TL;DR

DANSSino is a compact, segmented plastic scintillator detector successfully demonstrating the ability to detect reactor antineutrinos near a nuclear power plant, with promising sensitivity and background understanding.

Contribution

This paper presents the design, testing, and operational validation of DANSSino, a novel small-scale detector for reactor neutrino registration near a nuclear reactor.

Findings

Detects about 70 IBD events per day.

Achieves a signal-to-background ratio close to one.

Operates effectively at a 11 m distance from a 3 GW(th) reactor.

Abstract

DANSSino is a simplified pilot version of a solid-state detector of reactor antineutrino (it is being created within the DANSS project and will be installed close to an industrial nuclear power reactor). Numerous tests performed under a 3 GW(th) reactor of the Kalinin NPP at a distance of 11 m from the core demonstrate operability of the chosen design and reveal the main sources of the background. In spite of its small size (20x20x100 ccm), the pilot detector turned out to be quite sensitive to reactor neutrinos, detecting about 70 IBD events per day with the signal-to-background ratio about unity.