A 3D segmented Water-based Liquid Scintillator for high-precision detection of neutrinos in water

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel 3D highly-segmented water-based liquid scintillator detector designed for high-precision neutrino detection in water, potentially improving accuracy in neutrino-nucleus interaction measurements for future experiments.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new 3D segmented water-based liquid scintillator design with validated prototype and simulation studies, enhancing neutrino detection capabilities in water-based detectors.

Findings

Prototype successfully validated with cosmic ray data.

Optical model matches experimental data.

Design achieves 81% water by mass in active volume.

Abstract

Precision detection of neutrino-nucleus interactions in water with the complete detection of the final state, including leptons and hadrons, is challenging due to water being a non-scintillating medium. This can be a limitation for the next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, such as Hyper-Kamiokande, where the neutrino-nucleus interaction models must reach a few percent-level accuracy. Water-based liquid scintillator can be a game changer for the future near detectors. In this article, we propose a novel design consisting of a 3D highly-segmented water-based liquid scintillator. The water-based liquid scintillator is encapsulated within a highly-segmented rigid but very light structure that provides the optical isolation with a 1 cm$^{3}$ granularity, each read out by orthogonal wavelength shifting fibers, and 81\% of water by mass in the active volume. Such configuration is also suitable for pure liquid scintillator. The detector design, prototyped and validated with cosmic ray data, is described and results are reported. The optical model is studied with Monte Carlo simulations and results are compared with the collected data.