Evaluation of Gadolinium's Action on Water Cherenkov Detector Systems with EGADS

Understand

Used for both proton decay searches and neutrino physics, large water Cherenkov (WC) detectors have been very successful tools in particle physics.

• They are notable for their large masses and charged particle detection capabilities.
• While current WC detectors reconstruct charged particle tracks over a wide energy range, they cannot efficiently detect neutrons.
• Gadolinium (Gd) has the largest thermal neutron capture cross section of all stable nuclei and produces an 8 MeV gamma cascade that can be detected with high efficiency.