Heavy Water Cherenkov Detector Energy Scale Calibration via Michel Electron Detection

At Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the COHERENT collaboration has been building a heavy water Cherenkov detector to measure the neutrino flux coming from the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS). This detector is a steel cylinder filled with light water with an inner acrylic vessel holding heavy water and twelve PMTs lining the inside of the top lid. It began accumulating statistics in summer 2022 with light water only, since the inner acrylic tank and heavy water were not installed until early 2023. In this initial run with only light water, we identified Michel electrons produced from the decay of stopped cosmic muons within the detector and used these measurements to calibrate the energy scale of the detector. This presentation will describe this energy scale calibration process in the initial light water only phase of the Cherenkov detector.