Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 545
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3784-z

Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory

Spectroscopic study of light scattering in linear alkylbenzene for liquid scintillator neutrino detectors

¹ Hubei Nuclear Solid Physics Key Laboratory, Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-structures of Ministry of Education and School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China
² School of Physics, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China
³ Wuhan National High Magnetic Field Center, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China
⁴ Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

^* e-mail: xiangzhou@whu.edu.cn
^** e-mail: liuqian@ucas.ac.cn

Received: 16 April 2015
Accepted: 6 November 2015
Published online: 21 November 2015

Abstract

We have set up a light scattering spectrometer to study the depolarization of light scattering in linear alkylbenzene. The scattering spectra show that the depolarized part of light scattering is due to Rayleigh scattering. The additional depolarized Rayleigh scattering can make the effective transparency of linear alkylbenzene much better than expected. Therefore, sufficient scintillation photons can transmit through large liquid scintillator detector, such as that of the JUNO experiment. Our study is crucial to achieving an unprecedented energy resolution of 3 %/ required for the JUNO experiment to determine the neutrino mass hierarchy. The spectroscopic method can also be used to examine the depolarization of other organic solvents used in neutrino experiments.