Speaker
Description
Precision measurements in the SNO+ experiment require an accurate characterization of the detector's background profile. This work investigates anomalous background events identified in the reactor antineutrino analysis, hypothesized to arise from the elastic scattering of alpha particles on protons within the liquid scintillator.
While alpha particles are typically heavily quenched, recoil protons are significantly less quenched, resulting in higher visible energy deposition that can distort the observed spectrum of alpha decays in the detector.
We present the development of a detailed interaction model to characterize this background channel, utilizing a custom GPU-accelerated simulation for rapid prototyping and high-statistics validation of the alpha-proton scattering hypothesis. This work served as the basis for an official alpha-proton generator currently being integrated into the SNO+ Geant4-based analysis framework.
This poster discusses the underlying physics of the scattering model, the computational techniques used for validation, and the transition of this model into the collaboration's standard analysis pipeline.