Scintillation decay time and pulse shape discrimination in oxygenated and deoxygenated solutions of linear alkylbenzene for the SNO+ experiment

Understand

The SNO+ liquid scintillator experiment is under construction in the SNOLAB facility in Canada.

• The success of this experiment relies upon accurate characterization of the liquid scintillator, linear alkylbenzene (LAB).
• In this paper, scintillation decay times for alpha and electron excitations in LAB with 2 g/L PPO are presented for both oxygenated and deoxygenated solutions.
• While deoxygenation is expected to improve pulse shape discrimination in liquid scintillators, it is not commonly demonstrated in the literature.