Calibration of the IMB detector

Abstract

The IMB detector (named after its founding institutions: University of California, Irvine, the University of Michigan and Brookhaven National Laboratory) collected data on a wide range of phenomena for over eight years. It was the first and the largest of the ring imaging water Cherenkov detectors. The detector consisted of 8000 metric tons of ultra-pure water instrumented with 2048 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). The PMTs were placed on the roof, floor, and walls of the detector in a lattice of approximately 1 m spacing. It made measurements of contained events that ranged in energy from 15 MeV up to 1.5 GeV. This paper describes the calibration of the IMB detector. This procedure was accurate and stable over a wide range of physical variables. It was used with little change throughout the entire eight-year lifetime of the experiment. The IMB calibration is a model for future large-scale detectors that employ the water Cherenkov technique.