Related papers: Tagging Spallation Backgrounds with Showers in Wat…
Crucial questions about solar and supernova neutrinos remain unanswered. Super-Kamiokande has the exposure needed for progress, but detector backgrounds are a limiting factor. A leading component is the beta decays of isotopes produced by…
When muons travel through matter, their energy losses lead to nuclear breakup ("spallation") processes. The delayed decays of unstable daughter nuclei produced by cosmic-ray muons are important backgrounds for low-energy astrophysical…
Super-Kamiokande's spallation backgrounds - the delayed beta decays of nuclides following cosmic-ray muons - are nearly all produced by the small fraction of muons with hadronic showers. We show that these hadronic showers also produce…
Radioactivity induced by cosmic muon spallation is a dominant source of backgrounds for $\mathcal{O}(10)~$MeV neutrino interactions in water Cherenkov detectors. In particular, it is crucial to reduce backgrounds to measure the solar…
While cosmic ray muons themselves are relatively easy to veto in underground detectors, their interactions with nuclei create more insidious backgrounds via: (i) the decays of long-lived isotopes produced by muon-induced spallation…
Cosmic-ray-muon spallation-induced radioactive isotopes with $\beta$ decays are one of the major backgrounds for solar, reactor, and supernova relic neutrino experiments. Unlike in scintillator, production yields for cosmogenic backgrounds…
While the potential of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) to measure solar neutrinos is known, realizing this potential requires new techniques to reduce detector backgrounds. One of the most serious backgrounds is due to…
Radioactive isotopes produced through cosmic muon spallation are a background for rare-event detection in $\nu$ detectors, double-$\beta$-decay experiments, and dark-matter searches. Understanding the nature of cosmogenic backgrounds is…
Cosmic muon spallation backgrounds are ubiquitous in low-background experiments. For liquid scintillator-based experiments searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay, the spallation product $^{10}$C is an important background in the…
A subset of neutrino-induced upward through-going muons in the Super-Kamiokande detector consists of high energy muons which lose energy through radiative processes such as bremsstrahlung, e^{+} e^{-} pair production and photonuclear…
We study upward muon flux at neutrino detectors such as Super-Kamiokande resulting from high-energy neutrinos produced by the dark matter annihilation/decay at the Galactic center. In particular, we distinguish showering and non-showering…
The standard Super-Kamiokande analysis uses an estimator for particle identification by which it discriminates electrons (electron nutrinos) from muons (muon nutrinos). Use of this estimator has led to the claim of a significant deficiency…
Several methods can be used to perform statistical inference of primary composition of cosmic rays measured with water Cerenkov detectors as those in use at the Pierre Auger Southern Observatory. In the present work we assess the impact of…
Cosmic-ray muons produce various radioisotopes when passing through material. These spallation products can be backgrounds for rare event searches such as in solar neutrino, double-beta decay, and dark matter search experiments. The…
The presence of muons in air-showers initiated by cosmic ray protons and nuclei is well established as a powerful tool to separate such showers from those initiated by gamma rays. However, so far this approach has been fully exploited only…
Water Cherenkov detectors like Super-Kamiokande, and the next generation Hyper-Kamiokande are adding gadolinium to their water to improve the detection of neutrons. By detecting neutrons in addition to the leptons in neutrino interactions,…
The presence of muons in air-showers initiated by cosmic ray protons and nuclei is well established as a powerful tool to separate such showers from those initiated by gamma-rays. However, so far this approach has been fully exploited only…
A first study of neutron tagging is conducted in Super--Kamiokande, a 50,000-ton water Cherenkov detector. The tagging efficiencies of thermal neutrons are evaluated in a 0.2 % GdCl$_{3}$-water solution and pure water. They are determined…
Cosmic-ray muons that enter the Super-Kamiokande detector cause hadronic showers due to spallation in water, producing neutrons and radioactive isotopes. Those are a major background source for studies of MeV-scale neutrinos and searches…
If a galactic supernova explosion occurs in the future, it will be critical to rapidly alert the community to the direction of the supernova by utilizing neutrino signals in order to enable the initiation of follow-up optical observations.…