Space-Time Discriminant to Separate Double-Beta Decay from $^8$B Solar Neutrinos in Liquid Scintillator

Abstract

We present a technique for separating double beta-decay from $^8$B solar neutrino interactions in a liquid scintillator detector. The technique uses position and time of photo-electrons (PEs) to separate directional Cherenkov light from isotropic sintillation light in the reconstruction of the kinematics of candidate events. Here we introduce a Cherenkov-scintillation space time boundary defined as the light cone in the 2-dimensional space of the arrival time and the polar angle of each PE with respect to the axis from the center of the detector to the vertex. The PEs located near the boundary correspond to photons that were emitted early and contain a high fraction of directional Cherenkov PEs. We apply weights derived from the distance to the boundary of each individual PE, which are then used in a spherical harmonics analysis that separates the two-track event topology of double-beta decay from the one-track topology of $^8$B events. The Geant-4 simulation assumes a detector of 6.5 m radius filled with $^{130}$Te-loaded liquid scintillator and surrounded by photo-detectors with time and space resolutions of 100 ps and 3 mm respectively. The scintillation properties and photo-detector quantum efficiency are modeled after KamLAND. Assuming a fiducial volume of 3 m radius, a photo-coverage of 65% and vertex resolution of $\sigma_{r_v} = $ 5.2 cm at 2.53 MeV the method of reconstructing event topology predicts factors of 1.3 and 2.3 in background suppression at 90% and 70% signal efficiency respectively. Additionally, the PEs near the Cherenkov-scintillation space-time boundary can be used to reconstruct the directionality of one-electron candidate events, allowing for further $^8$B background suppression due to the correlation between the direction of the scattered electron and the position of the sun. We find polar and azimuthal angular resolutions of 0.46 and 0.84 radians respectively.