Feasibility Study on the Discrimination of Fluor Concentration in the Liquid Scintillator Using PMT Waveform and Short-Pass Filter

Abstract

Neutrinos are difficult to detect because they weakly interact with matter, making their properties least known. The response of the neutrino detector depends on the optical properties of the liquid scintillator (LS). Monitoring any characteristic changes in the LS helps to understand the temporal variation of detector response. In this study, a detector filled with LS was used to study the characteristics of the neutrinos detector. We investigated a method to distinguish the concentrations of PPO and bis-MSB, which are fluors added to LS, through a photomultiplier tube (PMT) acting as an optical sensor. Conventionally, it is very challenging to discriminate the flour concentration dissolved in LS. We employed the information of pulse shape and PMT coupled with the short-pass filter. To date, no literature report on a measurement using such an experimental setup has been published. As the concentration of PPO was increased, changes in the pulse shape were observed. In addition, as the concentration of bis-MSB was increased, a decrease in the light yield was observed in the PMT equipped with the short-pass filter. This result suggests the feasibility of real-time monitoring of LS properties, which are correlated with the fluor concentration, using a PMT without extracting the LS samples from the detector during the data acquisition process.