NuSol neutrino detector prototypes: An analysis of the efficiency and backgrounds of the detectors

Abstract

The NuSol project aims to orbit a satellite fitted with a gallium-doped scintillator within 10 solar radii of the sun on closest approach. The advantage of the close proximity to the sun is a much higher flux of neutrinos than on earth with the flux/kilogram of scintillator material to be roughly 500 times that of the same scintillator on earth. Other advantages of a space based neutrino detector can include off-axis measurements from the elliptic plane, high resolution signals due to smaller detectors, and potentially cheaper detectors. The work towards this thesis had as its main goals: determine the efficiency of the prototype liquid scintillator using an X-ray triggered gamma ray source and simulations, comparing the veto array prototype fail rate in the lab to the simulated veto fail rate, demonstrate the ability to resolve low energy gammas over the neutron backgrounds that are expected for space based scintillators, and a first examination of the gallium-doped scintillator prototypes developed for this project.