1–7 Jun 2014
Boston University
US/Eastern timezone

Background Assessment for the PROSPECT Short-Baseline Reactor Experiment

Not scheduled
Metcalf Auditorium (Boston University)

Metcalf Auditorium

Boston University

George Sherman Union 775 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215
Board: 144
Poster Reactor Neutrino Oscillations

Speaker

Nathaniel Bowden (LLNL)

Description

PROSPECT is a U.S.-based, multi-phase, 2-detector reactor antineutrino experiment whose primary goals are to probe short-baseline oscillations and perform a precise measurement of the reactor antineutrino spectrum. Potential detector deployment locations 4-20m from compact research reactor cores have been identified at three U.S. research reactor facilities. While these facilities have many attractive features including 235U cores and frequent on-off cycles allowing many background measurement opportunities, they also present several experimental challenges. These include little-to-no cosmic ray attenuating overburden and the potential for reactor correlated neutron and gamma ray backgrounds. The PROSPECT Collaboration has conducted an extensive background survey of multiple locations at each of the three sites. Several important sources of background have been identified, as well as variations amongst the sites. In this poster we detail the measurements conducted, the results obtained, and describe background mitigation strategies thus developed. LLNL-ABS-651773 This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

Primary author

Presentation materials