Pulse shape discrimination capability of metal-loaded organic liquid scintillators for a short-baseline reactor neutrino experiment

Abstract

A new short-baseline (SBL) reactor neutrino experiment is proposed to investigate a reactor antineutrino anomaly. A liquid scintillator (LS) is used to detect anti-neutrinos emitted from a Hanaro reactor, and the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) ability of the metal-loaded organic LSs is evaluated on small-scale laboratory samples. PSD can be affected by selecting different base solvents, and several of the LSs used two different organic base solvents, such as linear alkyl benzene and di-isopropylnaphthalene. For the metallic content, gadolinium (Gd) or lithium (Li-6) was loaded into a home-made organic LS and into a commercially available liquid scintillation cocktail. A feasibility study was performed for the PSD using several different liquid scintillation cocktails. In this work, the preparation and the PSD characteristics of a promising candidate, which will be used in an above-ground environment, are summarized and presented.