Low background techniques in liquid scintillator detectors

Abstract

Many neutrino physics experiments use organic liquid scintillators, which present a unique advantage: enormous masses (in the order of tens ktons) with very low radioactive background can be reached by assembling a detector with organic liquid scintillators. Thanks to the very fast decay rate, it is possible to localize the event in space and time and discriminate it from the background signals. Furthermore, organic liquid scintillators are very efficient in alfa/beta discrimination and offer the possibility to dissolve solvents in the chemical compounds to enhance the signal.