Scintillator ageing of the T2K near detectors from 2010 to 2021

The T2K experiment widely uses plastic scintillator as a target for neutrino interactions and an active medium for the measurement of charged particles produced in neutrino interactions at its near detector complex. Over 10 years of operation the measured light yield recorded by the scintillator bas...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Abe K., Akhlaq N., Akutsu R., Ali A., Alt C., Andreopoulos C., Antonova M., Aoki S., T2K Collaboration, Megías Vázquez, Guillermo Daniel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2022
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/149929
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/149929
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/17/10/P10028
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Gamma detectors (scintillators, CZT, HPGe, HgI etc)
Neutrino detectors
Performance of High Energy Physics Detectors
Scintillators, scintillation and light emission processes (solid, gas and liquid scintillators)
Descripción
Sumario:The T2K experiment widely uses plastic scintillator as a target for neutrino interactions and an active medium for the measurement of charged particles produced in neutrino interactions at its near detector complex. Over 10 years of operation the measured light yield recorded by the scintillator based subsystems has been observed to degrade by 0.9-2.2% per year. Extrapolation of the degradation rate through to 2040 indicates the recorded light yield should remain above the lower threshold used by the current reconstruction algorithms for all subsystems. This will allow the near detectors to continue contributing to important physics measurements during the T2K-II and Hyper-Kamiokande eras. Additionally, work to disentangle the degradation of the plastic scintillator and wavelength shifting fibres shows that the reduction in light yield can be attributed to the ageing of the plastic scintillator. The long component of the attenuation length of the wavelength shifting fibres was observed to degrade by 1.3-5.4% per year, while the short component of the attenuation length did not show any conclusive degradation.