hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
The Double Chooz experiment, analysing the reactor antineutrinos signal from the nuclear power
plant in Chooz (France), aims for a precision measurement of the neutrino mixing angle θ13
with the new data collected at the near and far detectors. An accurate and precisely known
detection efficiency of the electron antineutrino interaction ve + p -> e+ + n, called inverse beta
decay (IBD), is required in order to reach that goal. The correlated signal caused by the IBD
interaction requires a good estimation of the neutron detection e_ciency, dominant uncertainty
in the θ13 estimation. Among other calibration methods, the deployment of the 252Cf radioactive
source along the detectors' inner volumes is used to understand the behaviour of the neutron
captures in the detectors.
The recently collected 252Cf data and Monte Carlo simulations are studied along this thesis. The
fraction of n-captures on Gadolinium (atoms loaded in the neutrino target) has been estimated
to prove the time stability and consistency between detectors, and to study the behaviour of
the neutron captures at the inner volume borders. These results and the performed estimation
of the systematic uncertainties of the neutron capture efficiency provide a crucial input for the
antineutrino oscillation analysis with two detectors.
