Optimized scintillation strip design for the DANSS upgrade
Abstract
DANSS is a one cubic meter plastic scintillator detector with a primary goal of the sterile neutrino searches at a commercial nuclear reactor. Due to its highly advantageous location, fine segmentation and ability to change the distance to the neutrino production origin DANSS is ahead of many similar experiments around the world in terms of the counting rate, signal to background ratio and sterile neutrino exclusion regions. Yet a moderate energy resolution of the detector prevents the further progress in the physics program. The main challenge of the planned upgrade is to achieve the energy resolution of 12% at 1 MeV. The new design of the main sensitive element - the plastic scintillation strip - is the most important step forward. The strip prototypes were manufactured and tested at the pion beam of the PNPI synchrocyclotron. More than twice higher light output together with fairly flat detector response uniformity, longitudinal timing information and other optimizations will surely help to reach the upgrade goal. The paper discusses the drawbacks of the current strip version, outlines the new features of the proposed upgrade, describes the beam test procedure and presents the test results reflecting the advantages of the new strip design in comparison with the currently used version.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2112.04973,
title = {Optimized scintillation strip design for the DANSS upgrade},
author = {DANSS Collaboration and I. Alekseev and V. Belov and A. Bystryakov and M. Danilov and A. Ershova and D. Filosofov and M. Fomina and S. Kazartsev and A. Kobyakin and N. Kozlenko and A. Kuznetsov and I. Machikhiliyan and F. Mamedov and D. Medvedev and V. Nesterov and D. Novinsky and K. Perminov and I. Rozova and N. Rumyantseva and V. Rusinov and A. Salamatin and E. Samigullin and Ye. Shevchik and M. Shirchenko and Yu. Shitov and N. Skrobova and A. Starostin and I. Stekl and D. Svirida and E. Tarkovsky and A. Yakovleva and E. Yakushev and I. Zhitnikov and D. Zinatulina},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.04973},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
12 pages, 8 figures, corresponding author D. Svirida, accepted for publication in JINST, the accepted version, minor revisions