Cosmogenic neutron production at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
Name
PhysRevD.100.112005.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
786.13 KB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
4892ec9f1da02760045b153fd26a78d4
Author(s)
SNO Collaboration
Formaggio, Joseph A
Miller, M. L.
Monreal, Benjamin
Monroe, Jocelyn
Solomon-Oblath, Noah
Ott, Richard A.
Sonley, Thomas John
Date Issued
2019
Journal
Physical Review D
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
© 2019 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Neutrons produced in nuclear interactions initiated by cosmic-ray muons present an irreducible background to many rare-event searches, even in detectors located deep underground. Models for the production of these neutrons have been tested against previous experimental data, but the extrapolation to deeper sites is not well understood. Here we report results from an analysis of cosmogenically produced neutrons at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. A specific set of observables are presented, which can be used to benchmark the validity of geant4 physics models. In addition, the cosmogenic neutron yield, in units of 10-4 cm2/(g·μ), is measured to be 7.28±0.09(stat)-1.12+1.59(syst) in pure heavy water and 7.30±0.07(stat)-1.02+1.40(syst) in NaCl-loaded heavy water. These results provide unique insights into this potential background source for experiments at SNOLAB.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVD.100.112005
