Rayleigh scattering poses an intrinsic limit for the transparency of organic liquid scintillators. This work focuses on the Rayleigh scattering length of linear alkylbenzene (LAB), which will be used as the solvent of the liquid scintillator in the central detector of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory. We investigate the anisotropy of the Rayleigh scattering in LAB, showing that the resulting Rayleigh scattering length will be significantly shorter than reported before. Given the same overall light attenuation, this will result in a more efficient transmission of photons through the scintillator, increasing the amount of light collected by the photosensors and thereby the energy resolution of the detector.
@article{arxiv.1504.00987,
title = {Rayleigh scattering of linear alkylbenzene in large liquid scintillator detectors},
author = {Xiang Zhou and Qian Liu and Michael Wurm and Qingmin Zhang and Yayun Ding and Zhenyu Zhang and Yangheng Zheng and Li Zhou and Jun Cao and Yifang Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.00987},
year = {2015}
}