Development of an Organic Plastic Scintillator-based Muon Veto Operating at Sub-Kelvin Temperatures for the NUCLEUS Experiment

Abstract

The NUCLEUS experiment aims at measuring the coherent elastic scattering of nuclear reactor antineutrinos off nuclei using cryogenic calorimeters. Operating at an overburden of 3 m.w.e., muon-induced backgrounds are expected to be dominant. It is therefore essential to develop an efficient muon veto, with a detection efficiency of more than 99 %. This will be realized in NUCLEUS through a compact cube assembly of plastic scintillator panels. In order to prevent a large unshielded area where the cryostat intersects the shielding arrangement without unnecessarily increasing the induced detector dead time, a novel concept has been investigated, featuring a plastic scintillator-based active muon veto operating inside the NUCLEUS cryostat at sub-Kelvin temperatures. The verification of the key physical aspects of this cryogenic muon veto detector led to the first reported measurements of organic plastic scintillators at sub-Kelvin temperatures. The functionality of the principal scintillation process of organic plastic scintillators at these temperatures has been confirmed. On the basis of these findings, a disk-shape plastic scintillator equipped with wavelength shifting fibers and a silicon photomultiplier to guide and detect the scintillation light has been developed. The NUCLEUS cryogenic muon veto will be the first of its kind to be operated at sub-Kelvin temperatures.