Characterization of the optical model of the T2K 3D segmented plastic scintillator detector unit cube

Abe, S. and Alekseev, I. and Arai, T. and Arihara, T. and Arimoto, S. and Babu, N. and Baranov, V. and Bartoszek, L. and Berns, L. and Bhattacharjee, S. and Blondel, A. and Boikov, A.V. and Buizza-Avanzini, M. and Capó, J. and Cayo, J. and Chakrani, J. and Chong, P.S. and Chvirova, A. and Danilov, M. and Davis, C. and Davydov, Yu.I. and Dergacheva, A. and Dokania, N. and Douqa, D. and Doyle, T.A. and Drapier, O. and Eguchi, A. and Elias, J. and Fedorova, D. and Fedotov, S. and Ferlewicz, D. and Fuji, Y. and Furui, Y. and Gendotti, A. and Germer, A. and Giannessi, L. and Giganti, C. and Glagolev, V. and Hu, J. and Iwamoto, K. and Jakkapu, M. and Jesús-Valls, C. and Ji, J.Y. and Jung, C.K. and Kakuno, H. and Kasetti, S.P. and Kawaue, M. and Khabibullin, M. and Khotjantsev, A. and Kikawa, T. and Kikutani, H. and Kobayashi, H. and Kobayashi, T. and Kodama, S. and Kolupanova, M. and Korzenev, A. and Kose, U. and Kudenko, Y. and Kuribayashi, S. and Kutter, T. and Lachat, M. and Lachner, K. and Last, D. and Latham, N. and Silverio, D. Leon and Li, B. and Li, W. and Li, Z. and Lin, C. and Lin, L.S. and Lin, S. and Lux, T. and Mahtani, K. and Maret, L. and Caicedo, D.A. Martinez and Martynenko, S. and Matsubara, T. and Mauger, C. and McGrew, C. and McKean, J. and Mefodiev, A. and Miller, E. and Mineev, O. and Moreno, A.L. and Muñoz, A. and Nakadaira, T. and Nakagiri, K. and Nguyen, V. and Nicola, L. and Noah, E. and Nosek, T. and Okinaga, W. and Osu, L. and Paolone, V. and Parsa, S. and Pellegrino, R. and Ramirez, M.A. and Reh, M. and Ricco, C. and Rubbia, A. and Sakashita, K. and Sallin, N. and Sanchez, F. and Schefke, T. and Schloesser, C.M. and Sgalaberna, D. and Shvartsman, A. and Skrobova, N. and Speers, A.J. and Suslov, I.A. and Suvorov, S. and Svirida, D. and Tairafune, S. and Tanigawa, H. and Teklu, A. and Tereshchenko, V.V. and Tzanov, M. and Vasilyev, I.I. and Wallace, H.T. and Whitney, N. and Wood, K. and Xu, Y.-h. and Yang, G. and Yershov, N. and Yokoyama, M. and Yoshimoto, Y. and Zhao, X. and Zheng, H. and Zhu, T. and Zilberman, P. and Zimmerman, E.D. (2025) Characterization of the optical model of the T2K 3D segmented plastic scintillator detector unit cube. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment, 1080: 170757. ISSN 0168-9002

Abstract

The magnetized near detector (ND280) of the T2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment has been recently upgraded aiming to satisfy the requirement of reducing the systematic uncertainty from measuring the neutrino–nucleus interaction cross section, which is the largest systematic uncertainty in the search for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation. A key component of the upgrade is SuperFGD, a 3D segmented plastic scintillator detector made of approximately 2,000,000 optically-isolated 1cm 3 cubes. The SuperFGD cube unit shows promising optical performance, including a high light yield of about 40 photoelectrons (p.e.) per channel, a low cube-to-cube crosstalk rate below 3%, and a sub-nanosecond time resolution of 0.96 ns. By combining tracking and stopping power measurements of final state particles, this novel detector enables precise 3D-imaging of GeV neutrino interactions with reduced systematic uncertainties. A detailed Geant4 based optical simulation of the SuperFGD building block, i.e. a plastic scintillating cube read out by three wavelength shifting fibers, has been developed and validated with the different datasets collected in various beam tests. In this manuscript the description of the optical model as well as the comparison with data are reported.