PPRC Seminars

Cosmogenic Muon Induced Background Tagging in the SNO+ Detector

by LJ Nolan (Queen Mary)

UTC
410A & 410B (G O Jones Building)

410A & 410B

G O Jones Building

https://fnal.zoom.us/j/98747941652?pwd=czI5SGx6WnMzYlYxOHRvbjhEclRVUT09
Description
The SNO+ detector is a multipurpose neutrino detector located in Sudbury, Ontario. Consisting of an Acrylic Vessel housing the detector medium surrounded by ~9300 PMTs all suspended in a cavity of Ultra Pure Water 2km underground, SNO+ is the successor of the Nobel Prize winning SNO experiment, and will ultimately search for neutrino less double beta decay using natural Tellurium-130 dissolved in 780 tonnes of liquid scintillator. Currently, SNO+ is in its scintillator phase with a goal of understanding and categorising detector response and backgrounds before adding Te as well as carrying out physics analyses such as solar neutrino studies. Carbon-11, created by a cosmogenic muon interacting with Carbon-12, is a background to these solar neutrino studies. With a half-life of 20.3 minutes, Carbon-11 cannot be removed by the existing simple post-muon vetos. Instead Carbon-11 is identified using a three-fold coincidence; the muon, a coincident neutron capture, then an event in the energy region expected from a Carbon-11 decay close in time and space to the neutron capture. This talk outlines the steps taken to tune and develop each of these three steps to develop a likelihood algorithm for Carbon-11 decays.