Studies of Doped Scintillator at BNL: A Generic Method for Neutrino Measurement.

Using multiple liquid-scintillatior detectors at distances between 0.1 and 3 km from a nuclear reactor has the potential to determine the yet unknown neutrino-mixing angle θ13 via inverse β-decay reaction on protons. The coincidence tag between the emitted prompt positron and delayed neutron provides a clear signature of anti-neutrino event. The neutron capture signal is greatly enhanced by loading gadolinium into the liquid scintillator, due to the large (n, γ) cross sections of Gd isotopes. BNL has developed a procedure to synthesize Gd-loaded scintillator with long attenuation length (> 10 m), high light output (> 95% of pseudocumene), and long-tern stability (> 5 months to date). The purification and chemical quality of BNL-synthesized Gd-LS are discussed in the paper. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]