Measurement of Light Yield Response of Gd-compatible Water-based Liquid Scintillator with the Brookhaven 1-ton testbed

TL;DR

This study measures the light yield of Gd-compatible water-based liquid scintillator at different concentrations using cosmic-ray muons in a 1-ton detector, providing data to optimize future neutrino detectors.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative measurements of light yield for Gd-compatible WbLS at various concentrations using a 1-ton testbed, aiding detector optimization.

Findings

Light yield increases with Gd-compatible WbLS concentration.

Measured light yield ranges from 69.16 to 87.32 photons/MeV.

Results support improved design of neutrino detection systems.

Abstract

The Water-based Liquid Scintillator (WbLS) enables hybrid detection by combining scintillation and Cherenkov signals, providing superior event reconstruction capabilities compared to conventional neutrino detectors. We measured the light yield of Gd-compatible WbLS at varying concentrations from 0.35\% to 1\% by mass, using cosmic-ray muons in a 1-ton scale detector at BNL. The light yield is measured as (69.16 $\pm$ 6.92) ph / MeV at 0.35\% concentration, which increased to (87.32 $\pm$ 8.73) ph / MeV at 1\%. These results establish a quantitative basis for optimizing future WbLS-based detectors in neutrino physics.