Performance of Water-Based Liquid Scintillator : An Independent Analysis

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 the Cerenkov rings and scintillation light, as well as the total cost reduction compared to pure liquid scintillator (LS). The independent light yield measurement analysis for the light yield measurements using three different proton beam energies (210 MeV, 475 MeV, and 2000 MeV) 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.