Erlangen 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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T: Fachverband Teilchenphysik

T 105: Methods in Astroparticle Physics V

T 105.1: Vortrag

Freitag, 20. März 2026, 09:00–09:15, KS 00.004

Neutron Detection with Gadolinium-loaded water based liquid scintillator — •Amala Augusthy, Noah Goehlke, Johann Martyn, Philipp Kern, and Michael Wurm — JGU Mainz

ANNIE is an accelerator neutrino experiment at the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. It is a 26-ton Gadolinium-loaded water Cherenkov detector designed to measure CC interaction cross-sections and neutron multiplicity. In addition, ANNIE serves as a testbed for novel detector technologies amongst which is Water-based Liquid Scintillator (WbLS). WbLS is a novel detection medium that allows the simultaneous detection of scintillation and Cherenkov light. To test the detection capabilities with WbLS, a 366 L cylindrical vessel, filled with Gadolinium (Gd) loaded WbLS, dubbed SANDI was deployed in ANNIE in fall 2024. The energy carried away by final-state neutrons is a major source of systematic uncertainty in long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, hence it is very important to tag neutrons efficiently. To investigate neutron detection efficiency in Gd-WbLS, an AmBe source was deployed. Extracting the neutron detection efficiency requires a well-tuned Monte Carlo simulation. This talk presents an overview of the ongoing Monte Carlo tuning efforts aimed at quantifying the neutron detection efficiency in Gd-loaded WbLS.

Keywords: neutrons; neutrino experiments; Gadolinium; water based liquid scintillator