Assembly and Installation of the Daya Bay Antineutrino Detectors

TL;DR

This paper details the assembly and installation process of the Daya Bay antineutrino detectors, which are crucial for precise measurements of neutrino oscillations and the mixing angle theta13.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive description of the construction and deployment procedures for the detectors used in the Daya Bay experiment.

Findings

Successful assembly and deployment of eight identical detectors

Enhanced measurement precision of neutrino oscillation parameters

Reduction of systematic uncertainties in reactor neutrino experiments

Abstract

The Daya Bay reactor antineutrino experiment is designed to make a precision measurement of the neutrino mixing angle theta13, and recently made the definitive discovery of its nonzero value. It utilizes a set of eight, functionally identical antineutrino detectors to measure the reactor flux and spectrum at baselines of 300 - 2000m from the Daya Bay and Ling Ao Nuclear Power Plants. The Daya Bay antineutrino detectors were built in an above-ground facility and deployed side-by-side at three underground experimental sites near and far from the nuclear reactors. This configuration allows the experiment to make a precision measurement of reactor antineutrino disappearance over km-long baselines and reduces relative systematic uncertainties between detectors and nuclear reactors. This paper describes the assembly and installation of the Daya Bay antineutrino detectors.