Simulation and Efficiency Studies of Optical Photon Transportation and Detection with Plastic Antineutrino Detector Modules

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how various design parameters affect light collection efficiency in plastic scintillator antineutrino detectors, aiming to optimize their energy resolution for nuclear safety applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive simulation-based analysis of key factors influencing optical photon transport and detection efficiency in plastic scintillator antineutrino detectors, guiding improved design.

Findings

Photocathode size significantly affects light collection efficiency.

Light guide shape and reflectivity are crucial for optimizing detector performance.

Surface polishing and reflector type have lesser but notable impacts.

Abstract

In this work, the simulation of optical photons is carried out in an antineutrino detector module consisting of a plastic scintillator connected to light guides and photomultipliers on both ends, which is considered to be used for remote reactor monitoring in the field of nuclear safety. Using Monte Carlo (MC) based GEANT4 simulation, numerous parameters influencing the light collection and thereby the energy resolution of the antineutrino detector module are studied: e.g., degrees of scintillator surface roughness, reflector type, and its ap- plying method onto scintillator and light guide surface, the reflectivity of the reflector, light guide geometries and diameter of the photocathode. The impact of each parameter is inves- tigated by looking at the detected spectrum, i.e. the number photoelectrons per depositing energy. In addition, the average light collection efficiency of the detector module and its spatial variation are calculated for each simulation setup. According to the simulation re- sults, it is found that photocathode size, light guide shape, reflectivity of reflecting material and wrapping method show a significant impact on the light collection efficiency while scin- tillator surface polishing level and the choose of reflector type show relatively less impact. This study demonstrates that these parameters are very important in the design of plastic scintillator included antineutrino detectors to improve the energy resolution efficiency.