Center for Neutrino Physics
CHANDLER
The Center for Neutrino Physics at Virginia Tech VT-CNP is an organization of faculty and students committed to continuing the growth and advancing the stature of the existing, highly visible neutrino science program at Virginia Tech. The work of the center's members is not limited to neutrinos. It also includes electron scattering physics at JLab (G-zero and Qweak), and a large string theory effort.
VT-CNP collaborates with NEP's VT3G group which provides its modeling and simulation capabilities for the optimization of the CHANDLER antineutrino detection system.
The CHANDLER Detector Project
The CHANDLER detector technology is comprised of cubes of wavelength shifting plastic scintillator cubes and thin sheets of lithium-6 (6Li) loaded zinc sulfide (ZnS) scintillator. The 6 cm cubes are arraigned in layers of up to 20×20 cubes which are separated by the 6Li-loaded ZnS sheets. The cubes and sheets are well suited for detecting electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors, which produce a positron and a neutron when they interact in the plastic cubes. The positron produces a prompt flash of light in the cube, while the neutron bounces around for a while before capturing on the 6Li in the sheet producing a delayed flash of light. The correlation between these two distinct events provides a clean indication of a neutrino interaction.
VT3G's involvement with the CHANDLER project has focused on the modeling and simulation of the detection system for the optimization of the detector size, shielding requirements, and estimation of background noise due to cosmic rays. For further information view this presentation