Orateur
Mlle
Delphine Boursette
(LAL)
Description
The SoLid experiment is searching for sterile neutrinos from a nuclear research reactor. It looks
for inverse beta decays (a positron and a neutron in delayed coincidence) with a very segmented
detector made of thousands of scintillating cubes. SoLid has a very innovative hybrid technology
with 2 different scintillators. The cubes are made of Polyvynil-Toluene (PVT) to detect the positrons
and 6 LiF:ZnS sheets are put on one face of each PVT cube to detect the neutrons. The scintillation
signals are brought by wavelength shifting fibers to MPPCs. It allows us to do an efficient pulse
shape analysis to identify the signals from neutrons and positrons. The first module SM1 (288 kg)
took data in 2015 and the construction of SoLid phase 1 (∼ 1.5 t) is about to start. To improve the
energy resoluton of SoLid phase 1, we have tried to increase the light yield. To study the positron light yield on the PVT, we have built a test bench with a 207 Bi source.
We have improved the design of the cubes, their wrapping or the type and the configuration of the
fibers. We managed to increase the PVT light yield by about 40 % and improve the resolution of the
positron energy on the test bench from 20 % to 16 % at 1 MeV.
Auteur principal
Mlle
Delphine Boursette
(LAL)
