Measurements of neutrons produced by high-energy muons at the Boulby Underground Laboratory - High Energy Physics - Experiment

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Abstract: We present the first measurements of the muon-induced neutron flux at theBoulby Underground Laboratory. The experiment was carried out with an 0.73tonne liquid scintillator that also served as an anticoincidence system for theZEPLIN-II direct dark matter search. The experimental method exploited thedelayed coincidences between high-energy muon signals and gamma-rays fromradiative neutron capture on hydrogen or other elements. The muon-inducedneutron rate, defined as the average number of detected neutrons per detectedmuon, was measured as $0.079 \pm 0.003$ stat. neutrons-muon usingneutron-capture signals above 0.55 MeV in a time window of 40-190 $\mu$s afterthe muon trigger. Accurate Monte Carlo simulations of the neutron production,transport and detection in a precisely modeled laboratory and experimentalsetup using the GEANT4 toolkit gave a result 1.8 times higher than the measuredvalue. The difference greatly exceeds all statistical and systematicuncertainties. As the vast majority of neutrons detected in the current setupwere produced in lead we evaluated from our measurements the neutron yield inlead as $1.31 \pm 0.06 \times 10^{-3}$ neutrons-muon-g-cm$^2$ for a meanmuon energy of about 260 GeV.

Autor: H. M. Araujo, J. Blockley, C. Bungau, M. J. Carson, H. Chagani, E. Daw, B. Edwards, C. Ghag, E. V. Korolkova, V. A. Kudryavtsev,

Fuente: https://arxiv.org/