Abstract
An aboveground 60-kg reactor-antineutrino detector prototype, comprising a two-dimensional array of 36 6Li-doped pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator bars, is described. Each bar is 50 cm long with a square cross section of 5.5 cm. Doped with 6Li at 0.1% by mass, the detector is capable of identifying correlated energy depositions for the detection of reactor antineutrinos via the inverse-β-decay (IDB) reaction. Each bar is wrapped with a specular reflector that directs photons toward photomultiplier tubes mounted at both ends of the bar. This paper highlights the construction, key features, and main performance characteristics of the system. The system, which relies on multiple observables such as pulse-shape discrimination, energy, position, and timing, is capable of detecting IBD-like neutron-correlated backgrounds, long-lived decay chains, and cosmogenic isotopes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 054023 |
| Journal | Physical Review Applied |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2025 |
Funding
This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program under Project No. 20-SI-003 and by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (LLNL-JRNL-2005361). The authors acknowledge contributions from Oluwatomi Akindele, Phillip Hamilton, Andrew Mabe, and Nathan Eric Robertson at the early stages of this project.