Towards directional detection of reactor antineutrinos with segmented ⁶Li-doped PSD plastic scintillator — SANDD status update

The development of ⁶Li-doped PSD plastic scintillators at LLNL opened new opportunities for reactor-antineutrino detectors. Unlike liquid scintillators, plastics are easily machinable into segments and do not require special handling or regulatory approvals from reactor operators. Lithium-6 is advantageous over other neutron capture agents as it has a relatively high cross section and a well-localized capture ⁶Li(n, α). The reactor-antineutrino directional detection relies on reconstructing the interaction vertices for prompt positron and delayed neutron-capture events. To operate at the surface level with minimal or no overburden, the detector should have an excellent cosmogenic-fast-neutron background-rejection mechanism. Pulse-Shape Discrimination is a powerful technique to reject backgrounds.

This talk is a status update on the Segmented AntiNeutrino Directional Detector (SANDD) project, as we near a completion of the full detector — a set of plastic segments with a hybrid SiPM/PMT readout.