arXiv subjects

Jilei Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Jilei Xu.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Study of a Compact Device for Water Attenuation Length Measurements

This study presents the development and validation of a compact device for measuring the water attenuation length (WAL), utilizing photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), optical fibers, and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). An 8 m water tank and the device was constructed and validated in the laboratory. The device is capable of measuring WAL values up to 50 m. The stray light was blocked mainly by a custom-designed shutter. Toy Monte Carlo simulations were employed to evaluate the measurement uncertainty, which was found to be within reasonable limits. These simulations further indicate that the uncertainty can be reduced and more accurately predicted for a larger-scale device with a length of 30 m. Real-time monitoring was achieved by integrating the device into a water purification circulation system, providing a practical, scalable solution for WAL measurement in future large-scale water Cherenkov detectors.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

Design, waterproofing, and mass production of the 3-inch PMT frontend system of JUNO

Over 25,600 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) have been instrumented for the central detector of the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory. Each PMT is equipped with a high-voltage divider and a frontend cable with waterproof sealing. Groups of sixteen PMTs are connected to the underwater frontend readout electronics via specialized multi-channel waterproof connectors. This paper outlines the design and mass production processes for the high-voltage divider, the cable and connector, as well as the waterproof potting of the PMT bases. The results of the acceptance tests of all the integrated PMTs are also presented.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

Reconstruction of the Effective Energy-deposition Vertex of Muon Showers using PMT Waveform in a Large-scale Liquid Scintillator Detector

Cosmogenic muon-induced radioactive isotopes pose a significant background source for deep-underground low-background experiments. Although rock overburdens at underground sites substantially attenuate the cosmogenic muon flux, residual muon-induced backgrounds still require active suppression. For future multi-kiloton liquid scintillator (LS) detectors, such as the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), shower muons contribute to more than 88\% of all muon-induced isotopes. Consequently, precise reconstruction of shower vertices is essential for implementing localized spatial vetoes. We propose a novel waveform-based method to reconstruct the shower vertex, defined as the energy-deposition centroid. By subtracting the track contributions from non-shower muons in the recorded waveforms, the isolated shower component is extracted. Subsequently, combined with a photon propagation model and an iterative optimization algorithm, the shower vertex positions are reconstructed. Simulations show that for 68\% of events, the single shower vertex resolution is better than 0.16~m, 0.15~m, and 0.26~m along X, Y, and Z respectively. Furthermore, the reconstruction efficiency exceeds 96\% when requiring the distance between the reconstructed and true vertices to be less than 3.0 m. This method provides a critical technical foundation for muon-induced background suppression in JUNO and other large-scale LS detectors.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2025

A highly sensitive SF$_6$-based leak test system for JUNO 3-inch PMT underwater electronics boxes

A total of 25600 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), along with their corresponding frontend electronics, have been installed at the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). These electronics are housed in 200 stainless steel boxes that operate underwater. To verify the sealing integrity of the underwater boxes following integration, we developed an SF$_6$-based leak test system, opting against the typical helium-based system due to helium's ability to penetrate the PMT glass. After a few hours of accumulating leaking SF$_6$ from the underwater boxes, a leak rate detection limit of $2.3\times{10}^{-9}$~Pa$\cdot$m$^3$/s in terms of SF$_6$ was achieved, corresponding to $1.65\times{10}^{-8}$~Pa$\cdot$ m$^3$/s helium equivalent. This meets the sensitivity requirement of 1$\times$10$^{-7}$~Pa$\cdot$m$^3$/s. This system was critical in identifying and replacing a few cases of leaking underwater boxes before installation.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2025

The High Voltage Splitter board for the JUNO SPMT system

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) in southern China is designed to study neutrinos from nuclear reactors and natural sources to address fundamental questions in neutrino physics. Achieving its goals requires continuous operation over a 20-year period. The small photomultiplier tube (small PMT or SPMT) system is a subsystem within the experiment composed of 25600 3-inch PMTs and their associated readout electronics. The High Voltage Splitter (HVS) is the first board on the readout chain of the SPMT system and services the PMTs by providing high voltage for biasing and by decoupling the generated physics signal from the high-voltage bias for readout, which is then fed to the front-end board. The necessity to handle high voltage, manage a large channel count, and operate stably for 20 years imposes significant constraints on the physical design of the HVS. This paper serves as a comprehensive documentation of the HVS board: its role in the SPMT readout system, the challenges in its design, performance and reliability metrics, and the methods employed for production and quality control.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2024

Dark Count of 20-inch PMTs Generated by Natural Radioactivity

The primary objective of the JUNO experiment is to determine the ordering of neutrino masses using a 20-kton liquid-scintillator detector. The 20-inch photomultiplier tube (PMT) plays a crucial role in achieving excellent energy resolution of at least 3% at 1 MeV. Understanding the characteristics and features of the PMT is vital for comprehending the detector's performance, particularly regarding the occurrence of large pulses in PMT dark counts. This research paper aims to further investigate the origin of these large pulses in the 20-inch PMT dark count rate through measurements and simulations. The findings confirm that the main sources of the large pulses are natural radioactivity and muons striking the PMT glass. By analyzing the PMT dark count rate spectrum, it becomes possible to roughly estimate the radioactivity levels in the surrounding environment.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

A novel design for 100 meter-scale water attenuation length measurement and monitoring

Water Cherenov detector is a vital part in most of neutrino or cosmic ray research. As detectors grow in size, the water attenuation length (WAL) becomes increasingly essential for detector performance. It is essential to measure or monitor the WAL. While many experiments have measured WAL in the lab or detector, only the Super-Kamiokande experiment has achieved values exceeding 50 meters in the detector with a moving light source. However, it is impractical for many experiments to place a moving light source inside the detector, necessitating an alternative method for investigating long WAL. A novel system has been proposed to address the challenge of investigating long WAL. This system focuses on ample water Cherenkov detectors and features a fixed light source and photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) at varying distances, eliminating the need for moving parts. The static setup demands high precision for accurate measurement of long WAL. Each component, including LED, diffuse ball, PMTs, and fibers, is introduced to explain uncertainty control. Based on lab tests, the system's uncertainty has been controlled within 5\%. Additionally, camera technology is also used during the evaluation of the system uncertainty, which has the potential to replace PMTs in the future for this measurement. Monte Carlo simulations have shown that the system can achieve a 5\% measurement uncertainty at WAL of 80 meters and 8\% at WAL of 100 meters. This system can be used in experiments with large Cherenkov detectors such as JUNO water veto and Hyper-K.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2023

Simulation Software of the JUNO Experiment

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose experiment, under construction in southeast China, that is designed to determine the neutrino mass ordering and precisely measure neutrino oscillation parameters. Monte Carlo simulation plays an important role for JUNO detector design, detector commissioning, offline data processing, and physics processing. The JUNO experiment has the world's largest liquid scintillator detector instrumented with many thousands of PMTs. The broad energy range of interest, long lifetime, and the large scale present data processing challenges across all areas. This paper describes the JUNO simulation software, highlighting the challenges of JUNO simulation and solutions to meet these challenges, including such issues as support for time-correlated analysis, event mixing, event correlation and handling the simulation of many millions of optical photons.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2022

Study on the linearity of 20" dynode and MCP PMTs

The linearity of charge response is an important feature of photomultiplier tubes (PMT) for physics measurements, especially the newly developed 20" MCP-PMT. In this paper, in addition to the traditional method of double light sources, we applied another relative method of 20" PMT to 3" PMT to measure the linearity of the 20" dynode and MCP PMTs in pulse mode with a waveform digitizer. The measurements show a good linear response of 20" PMTs to 1,000 photoelectrons (p.e.). The correlations of the amplitude, rise-time, fall-time, FWHM, baseline recovery, overshoot, and late-pulse to the output charge of the 20" PMTs derived from the waveform analysis, where the MCP-PMT shows very different features compared to the dynode-PMT in particular.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Study of the front-end signal for the 3-inch PMTs instrumentation in JUNO

25,600 3-inch PMTs will be installed in Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) to achieve more precise energy calibration and to extend the physics detection potential. Performances of all bare PMTs have been characterized and these PMTs are being instrumented with the high voltage divider, underwater front-end cable, and connector. In this paper, we present a dedicated study on signal quality at different stages of the instrumentation. An optimized high voltage ratio was confirmed and finalized which improved the PMT transit time spread by 25%. The signal charge was attenuated by 22.5% (13.0%) in the 10 m (5 m) cable and it required the addition of 45 V (23 V) to compensate for the loss of PMT gain. There was a 1% overshoot following the PMT signal and no sign of reflection in the connector. A group of 16 3-inch PMTs with the full instrumentation was installed in the JUNO prototype detector together with a few 8-inch and 20-inch PMTs, which showed good stability and demonstrated a photon detection system with multiple types of PMTs.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2021

Muon reconstruction with a convolutional neural network in the JUNO detector

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is designed to determine the neutrino mass ordering and measure neutrino oscillation parameters. A precise muon reconstruction is crucial to reduce one of the major backgrounds induced by cosmic muons. This article proposes a novel muon reconstruction method based on convolutional neural network (CNN) models. In this method, the track information reconstructed by the top tracker is used for network training. The training dataset is augmented by applying a rotation to muon tracks to compensate for the limited angular coverage of the top tracker. The muon reconstruction with the CNN model can produce unbiased tracks with performance that spatial resolution is better than 10 cm and angular resolution is better than 0.6 degrees. By using a GPU accelerated implementation a speedup factor of 100 compared to existing CPU techniques has been demonstrated.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2021

Mass production and characterization of 3-inch PMTs for the JUNO experiment

26,000 3-inch photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) have been produced for Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) by the Hainan Zhanchuang Photonics Technology Co., Ltd (HZC) company in China and passed all acceptance tests with only 15 tubes rejected. The mass production began in 2018 and elapsed for about 2 years at a rate of $\sim$1,000~PMTs per month. The characterization of the PMTs was performed in the factory concurrently with production as a joint effort between HZC and JUNO. Fifteen performance parameters were tracked at different sampling rates, and novel working strategies were implemented to improve quality assurance. This constitutes the largest sample of 3-inch PMTs ever produced and studied in detail to date.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2018

Muon Tracking with the fastest light in the JUNO Central Detector

The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment designed to measure the neutrino mass hierarchy using a central detector (CD), which contains 20 kton liquid scintillator (LS) surrounded by about 18,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), located 700~m underground. The rate of cosmic muons reaching the JUNO detector is about 3~Hz and the muon induced neutrons and isotopes are major backgrounds for the neutrino detection. Reconstruction of the muon trajectory in the detector is crucial for the study and rejection of those backgrounds. This paper will introduce the muon tracking algorithm in the JUNO CD, with a least squares method of PMTs' first hit time (FHT). Correction of the FHT for each PMT was found to be important to reduce the reconstruction bias. The spatial resolution and angular resolution are better than 3~cm and 0.4~degree, respectively, and the tracking efficiency is greater than 90\% up to 16~m far from the detector center.

physics.ins-det↗