Performance of Water-Based Liquid Scintillator: An Independent Analysis

Abstract

The water-based liquid scintillator (WbLS) is a new material currently under development. It is based on the idea of dissolving the organic scintillator in water using special surfactants. This material strives to achieve the novel detection techniques by combining theCerenkov rings and scintillation light, aswell as the total cost reduction compared to pure liquid scintillator (LS).The independent light yieldmeasurement analysis for the light yield measurements using three different proton beamenergies (210MeV, 475MeV, and 2000MeV) for water, two different WbLS formulations (0.4% and 0.99%), and pure LS conducted at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA, is presented. The results show that a goal of ∼100 optical photons/MeV, indicated by the simulation to be an optimal light yield for observing both the Cerenkov ring and the scintillation light from the proton decay in a large water detector, has been achieved