Speaker
Dr
Minfang Yeh
(Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Description
The pure liquid scintillation detector has the common features of high light yield, adequate attenuation length and long stability. However its high cost, less material compatibility and extensive liquid handling often raise special concerns, particularly the chemical safety in the confined space of underground laboratories. The water-based liquid scintillator (W-LS) is of great interest to large scale physics experiments, e.g., nucleon decay, due to its simplicity of liquid handling and cost-efficiency. The conventional scintillation cocktail designed for α- or β-emitting nuclides in aqueous solution often forms opaque micro-emulsion and is instable in water. To make feasible W-LS of many tens of kTon as the target mass for neutrino experiments, extensive R&D in mass-producible liquid scintillator and water chemistry are essential. At BNL, 8 to 20% of organic liquid scintillator loaded in water medium have been prepared and stable for more than 6 months since synthesis. The preparation and performance, i.e., photon production, attenuation length and lifetime, of newly developed W-LS will be presented.
*Research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics and
Office of High Energy Physics, under contract with Brookhaven National Laboratory –
Brookhaven Science Associates.
Author
Dr
Minfang Yeh
(Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Co-authors
Dr
Liangming Hu
(Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Dr
Richard Hahn
(Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Dr
Sunej Hans
(Brookhaven National Laboratory)
