Water Cherenkov Detector Research Articles

Energy loss measurements of inclined muon bundles in the Cherenkov water detector

An experiment on the measurements of the energy deposit of inclined cosmic ray muon bundles is being conducted at the experimental complex NEVOD (MEPhI). The complex includes the Cherenkov water calorimeter with a volume of 2000 m3 and the coordinate-tracking detector DECOR with a total area of 70 m2. The DECOR data are used to determine the local muon densities in the bundle events and their arrival directions, while the energy deposits (and hence the average muon energy loss) are evaluated from the Cherenkov calorimeter response. Average energy loss carries information about the mean muon energy in the bundles. The detection of the bundles in a wide range of muon multiplicities and zenith angles gives the opportunity to explore the energy range of primary cosmic ray particles from about 10 to 1000 PeV in the frame of a single experiment with a relatively small compact setup. Experimental results on the dependence of the muon bundle energy deposit on the zenith angle and the local muon density are presented and compared with expectations based on simulations of the EAS muon component with the CORSIKA code.

Energy spectrum of cascade showers initiated by cosmic ray muons in the Cherenkov water detector

Results of analysis of experimental data on cascade showers with energies of 0.1 – 10 TeV initiated by muons in the Cherenkov water detector NEVOD are presented. The method of selection and reconstruction of cascade parameters in the volume of the detector is discussed. Experimental distributions of cascade axes in zenith angle and energy spectrum of cascades are obtained. The measured distributions are compared with results of calculations.

Preliminary results of the AMIGA engineering array at the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Auger Muons and Infill for the Ground Array (AMIGA) aims to both extend the detection range of the Pierre Auger Observatory down to energies ~ 1016.5 eV and to measure the muon content of extensive air showers. To accomplish these goals, its detection system is composed of an array of coupled water-Cherenkov and scintillation detectors deployed in a graded triangular grid of 433 and 750 m spacings. At each position, the scintillation detector is buried 2.3 m deep so as to shield it from the air shower electromagnetic component and thus only measure the muon component. These muon detectors have 30 m2 area split into modules, each of them highly segmented in 64 plastic-scintillator strips with an embedded wavelength-shifter optical fiber to transport light to an optical sensor located at the center of the module. During the engineering array phase (finished in November 2017) two module areas (5 m2 and 10 m2) and two optical sensors (photo-multiplier tubes and silicon-photomultipliers) were tested. In this work, we present the final performance of the muon detectors equipped with silicon-photomultipliers which were thereafter selected as the baseline design for the AMIGA production phase. Analyses and results are based both on laboratory and field measurements.

NEVOD as a test facility for future neutrino telescopes

The possibility to calibrate the new optical modules mDOM of the IceCube-Upgrade neutrino telescope inside the tank of Cherenkov water detector NEVOD is discussed. Methods to calibrate optical modules are presented. The spatial lattice of the detector NEVOD and deployed outside of the water tank calibration telescope system and coordinate-tracking detector DECOR allow calibrating the response of mDOM with respect to the Cherenkov light from muons, muon bundles and cascades with known trajectories.

The ToolDAQ DAQ Software Framework & Its Use In The Hyper-K & ANNIE Detectors

DAQ software is often a little-considered part of an experiment, with many experiments either using a rigid, heavily convoluted multi experiment framework or custom built software that lacks features and is fragmented. Equally these solutions tend not to be fault tolerant, scalable, distributed, dynamic to hardware changes or easy to produce. Presented here is ToolDAQ a C++ DAQ framework which has been designed to be easy and fast to develop for in a modular and simple way. It has many features such as in-built service discovery, dynamic reconfiguration, remote control/monitoring via web and terminal interfaces and a highly scalable fault-tolerant network communication infrastructure provided by ZeroMQ (ZMQ) built in. It is also compatible with newer and older hardware, both being very lightweight and with low dependencies. The framework is currently in use on the Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) in Fermilab and has been used to develop the DAQ for Hyper Kamiokande (Hyper-K) , whose implementations and use cases we will discuss, as well as many other places like stand-alone hardware and the intermediate water Cherenkov detector (E61) at J-PARC.

SNO+ present status and prospects

SNO+ has been taking data for one year, as a pure water Cherenkov detector, while preparing for filling with scintillator and then loading 3900 kg of Tellurium to search for neutrinoless double beta decay. This contribution reviews the present results and status of SNO+, focusing on how the water commissioning phase extends the capabilities of previous Cherenkov detectors, and on the results that the present data provides for neutrino and other low background physics.

Scintillator Surface Detector simulations for AugerPrime

Knowledge of the mass composition of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays is understood to be a salient component in answering the open questions in the field. The AugerPrime upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory aims to enhance its surface detector with the hardware necessary to reconstruct primary mass for individual events. This involves placing a scintillation-based detector with an active area of 3.8 m2 on top of each existing water-Cherenkov detector in its surface detector array. Here, we present the methods for simulating this Scintillator Surface Detector. These simulations have and will continue to aid in the interpretation of measurements with AugerPrime as well as the development and improvement of event reconstruction algorithms including primary mass.

Hardware-level calibration of the Chitaga Water Cherenkov Detector in the GUANE array for space weather study

Water Cherenkov Detectors (WCDs) play an essential role in space weather and cosmic rays studies around the world. In this article, we present a general methodology to calibrate a WCD based finding its optimum operation point and counting the delay time of the transmission cables. The dynode charge histogram of the WCD and CORSIKA simulations validate this methodology. Finally, to illustrate the capability of WCD tomeasure fluctuations in the secondary CR flux, we studied the 07.09.2017 Forbush and compared our measurements with data obtained from the Neutron Flux Monitor at UNAM and the Kyoto Dst index service.

Tests of Lorentz invariance at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Experimental tests of Lorentz symmetry in systems of all types are critical for ensuring that the basic assumptions of physics are well-founded. Data from all phases of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, a kiloton-scale heavy water Cherenkov detector, are analyzed for possible violations of Lorentz symmetry in the neutrino sector. Such violations would appear as one of eight possible signal types in the detector: six seasonal variations in the solar electron neutrino survival probability differing in energy and time dependence, and two shape changes to the oscillated solar neutrino energy spectrum. No evidence for such signals is observed, and limits on the size of such effects are established in the framework of the Standard Model Extension, including 40 limits on perviously unconstrained operators and improved limits on 15 additional operators. This makes limits on all minimal, Dirac-type Lorentz violating operators in the neutrino sector available for the first time.

Cherenkov water detector NEVOD and its further development

Abstract NEVOD is the first and the only in the world Cherenkov water detector (CWD) for investigations of all cosmic ray components on the Earth’s surface. Conception of quasispherical modules for detection of Cherenkov light in water from any direction with an equal efficiency is analyzed. Additional detectors for CWD and results of various investigations are discussed. The future development of the CWD NEVOD as a test facility for calibration of new optical modules for very large volume neutrino telescopes is considered.

Shielding the Earth Magnetic Field using Spherical Coils

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a neutrino experiment consisting of 2 systems; central detector (CD) and veto systems. The CD is composed of thousands of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) used to detect light signals from neutrino induced interactions with liquid scintillator inside the CD. Another set of PMTs is used as water Cherenkov detector, together with muon top tracker forming the veto system for background rejection [1]. However, the PMTs’ efficiency decreases when they are used in magnetic field. At JUNO’s construction site, the Earth Magnetic Field (EMF) is approximately 0.45 G [2]. Therefore, the PMTs of JUNO detector are necessary to be shielded from the EMF.This work aims to design current-carrying coils that generate magnetic field in the opposite direction to the EMF, thus, the two fields tend to cancel each other. We found that the magnetic field generated by the 32 circular coils forming a sphere of diameter 43.5 m can reduce the residual magnetic field to be lower than 10% of the EMF at the CD region and less than 20% at the veto region. Moreover, considering the secular change of the EMF’s inclination angle of approximately 2.87° over the 20 years of its operation, the coils can maintain the residual magnetic field both in the CD and the veto regions to be less than 10% and 20%, respectively.

Recent results and future prospects of Super-Kamiokande

Abstract Super-Kamiokande (SK) is a water Cherenkov detector located 1000 m underground in Kamioka Observatory , ICRR, University of Tokyo in Japan. It consists of a cylindrical stainless steel tank, 50,000 ton of purified water, and 11,000 of 20-inch PMTs. The fiducial volume of the SK detector is 22.5 kton. The experiment was started in April 1996, and currently phase IV (SK-IV) is running. SK has been the world largest water Cherenkov detector with purified water in underground since 1996. SK has a variety of measurement or physics targets, namely, solar neutrinos , atmospheric neutrinos , supernova neutrinos, neutrinos produced by the accelerator in J-PARC (as T2K experiment), and search for nucleon decay. In near future, we are going to move to the next phase, that is SK-Gd. In the SK-Gd phase, we are planning to add 0.1% of gadolinium to the current SK detector in order to enhance neutron tagging efficiency, and then try to achieve the first observation of supernova relic neutrinos (SRN) (or diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB)). The initial work in this upgrade project was started in June 2018. This paper reports a brief summary of the SK experiment, recent solar neutrino results, and recent atmospheric neutrino results. As a future plan, the purpose of SK-Gd and status of the upgrade work are reported.

Novel methods for measuring the optical parameters of the water Cherenkov detector

In this paper, novel methods are presented to measure the optical properties of the cylindrical water Cherenkov detector with high-reflectivity and diffuse reflection dominated Tyvek material as the inner surface. The mean transmission distance of photons between each reflection in the cylindrical water Cherenkov detector (the mean step length), is constant when there is a sufficient number of photons with random directions in the tank. The time distribution of the photons collected by the photomultiplier tube (PMT) in the water Cherenkov detector is approximately exponential, and the decay factor of the time distribution is determined by the absorption length of photons in the water, the reflectivity of the inner Tyvek surface, the mean step length of photons reflected in the tank, and the ratio of reflective Tyvek area to the total inner surface area. By considering the principles of photon propagation in the water Cherenkov detector, we developed novel methods to measure the water absorption length, Tyvek reflectivity, and mean step length of photons in the tank. The water absorption length and Tyvek reflectivity can be measured simultaneously by changing the height of the water, while the step length and Tyvek reflectivity in air can be measured simultaneously by changing the area of Tyvek, and the mean step length of photons can also be measured even all other parameters unknown. The proposed novel methods are supported by the deduction of formulae and verified by GEANT4 simulations and the prototype experiment.

Nucleon-light dark matter annihilation through baryon number violation

Dark matter that participates in baryon-number violating interactions can annihilate with baryons if the dark matter particle is not protected under discrete symmetries. In this paper we investigate the dark matter - baryon annihilation in color-triplet extensions of the Standard Model, in which a fermionic dark matter can be kinematically stable within a small mass range near the proton mass. We demonstrate that the DM's annihilation with nucleons can be probed to stringent limits at large-volume water Cherenkov detectors like the Super-Kamionkonde experiment, with the mediator scale $m_\Phi$ constrained up to $10^{7}$ GeV. In case of a Majorana light dark matter, this constraint is weaker yet close in magnitude to that from neutron-antineutron oscillation. In the Dirac DM case, the dark matter- nucleon annihilation gives much stronger bounds than that from the uncertainties of the neutron decay lifetime. In a limited range of the DM mass above $m_p+m_e$, the DM-nucleon annihilation bound can be higher than the requirement from the DM's stability in the Universe. Given the strong limits from Super-Kamionkonde, we find it below the current experimental capabilities to indirectly detecting the dark matter- nucleon annihilation signal in diffuse Galactic gamma rays and neutron star heating.

Model-independent diagnostic of self-induced spectral equalization versus ordinary matter effects in supernova neutrinos

Self-induced flavor conversions near the supernova (SN) core can make the fluxes for different neutrino species become almost equal, potentially altering the dynamics of the SN explosion and washing out all further neutrino oscillation effects. We present a new model-independent analysis strategy for the next galactic SN signal that will distinguish this flavor equalization scenario from a matter effects only scenario during the SN accretion phase. Our method does not rely on fitting or modelling the energy-dependent fluences of the different species to a known function, but rather uses a model-independent comparison of charged-current and neutral-current events at large next-generation underground detectors. Specifically, we advocate that the events due to elastic scattering on protons in a scintillator detector, which is insensitive to oscillation effects and can be used as a model-independent normalization, should be compared with the events due to inverse beta decay of $\bar\nu_e$ in a water Cherenkov detector and/or the events due to charged-current interactions of $\nu_e$ in an Argon detector. The ratio of events in these different detection channels allow one to distinguish a complete flavor equalization from a pure matter effect, for either of the neutrino mass orderings, as long as the spectral differences among the different species are not too small.

The Calibration Telescope System of the NEVOD Cherenkov Water Detector

The calibration telescope system of the NEVOD Cherenkov water detector is described. Scintillation counters are used in the setup as detecting elements. The detection system is equipped with logical and amplitude channels and provides the calibration of the Cherenkov water detector. It can also be used to investigate the electron and muon components of an extensive air shower. A method for amplitude calibration of the scintillation counters is described, with which it is possible to estimate the number of detected charged particles. The results for the 1.5-year operation of the setup as a detector of extensive air showers are presented.

Supernova neutrino scattering off Gadolinium even isotopes in water Cherenkov detectors

Neutrinos in water can be detected thanks to several reactions. The most important one is the inverse beta decay ν̄e + p → n + e+. The detection of 2.2 MeV γ from neutron capture on free protons is very difficult. The feasibility of Gadolinium (Gd) doping in water Cherenkov detectors essentially reduces background signals and enhances the sensitivity to neutrino detection. In this work the supernova neutrino charged-current interactions with the most abundant Gd even isotopes (A=156,158 and 160) are studied. We use measured spectra and the quasiparticle random phase approximation to calculate the charged current response of Gd isotopes to supernova neutrinos. Flux-averaged cross sections are obtained considering quasi-thermal neutrino spectra.

Study on the radon removal for the water system of Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), a 20-kton multipurpose underground liquid scintillator detector, was proposed with the determination of the neutrino mass hierarchy as a primary physics goal. To veto the cosmogenic background and shield the central detector from the environmental radioactivity, a multi-veto system, which consists of a water Cherenkov detector and a top tracker detector, is required. In order to keep the water quality good and remove the radon from water, an ultrapure water system, a radon removal system and radon concentration measurement system have been designed.

Physics potentials with the second Hyper-Kamiokande detector in Korea

Hyper-Kamiokande consists of two identical water-Cherenkov detectors of total 520~kt with the first one in Japan at 295~km from the J-PARC neutrino beam with 2.5$^{\textrm{o}}$ Off-Axis Angles (OAAs), and the second one possibly in Korea in a later stage. Having the second detector in Korea would benefit almost all areas of neutrino oscillation physics mainly due to longer baselines. There are several candidate sites in Korea with baselines of 1,000$\sim$1,300~km and OAAs of 1$^{\textrm{o}}$$\sim$3$^{\textrm{o}}$. We conducted sensitivity studies on neutrino oscillation physics for a second detector, either in Japan (JD $\times$ 2) or Korea (JD + KD) and compared the results with a single detector in Japan. Leptonic CP violation sensitivity is improved especially when the CP is non-maximally violated. The larger matter effect at Korean candidate sites significantly enhances sensitivities to non-standard interactions of neutrinos and mass ordering determination. Current studies indicate the best sensitivity is obtained at Mt. Bisul (1,088~km baseline, $1.3^\circ$ OAA). Thanks to a larger (1,000~m) overburden than the first detector site, clear improvements to sensitivities for solar and supernova relic neutrino searches are expected.

Sensitivity of a low threshold directional detector to CNO-cycle solar neutrinos

A first measurement of neutrinos from the CNO fusion cycle in the Sun would allow a resolution to the current solar metallicity problem. Detection of these low-energy neutrinos requires a low-threshold detector, while discrimination from radioactive backgrounds in the region of interest is significantly enhanced via directional sensitivity. This combination can be achieved in a water-based liquid scintillator target, which offers enhanced energy resolution beyond a standard water Cherenkov detector. We study the sensitivity of such a detector to CNO neutrinos under various detector and background scenarios, and draw conclusions about the requirements for such a detector to successfully measure the CNO neutrino flux. A detector designed to measure CNO neutrinos could also achieve a few-percent measurement of pep neutrinos.