Study of a prototype detector for the Daya Bay neutrino experiment

The Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment is designed to precisely measure the neutrino mixing angle θ13. In order to study the details of the detector response and finalize the detector design, a prototype neutrino detector with a scale of 1/3 in diameter is constructed at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Beijing. The detector is viewed by 45 8″ photomultipliers, which are calibrated by LED light pulse. The energy response of the detector, including the resolution, linearity, spatial uniformity, etc., is studied by radioactive sources 133Ba, 137Cs, 60Co, and 22Na at various locations of the detector. The measurement shows that the detector, particularly the specially designed optical reflectors, works as expected. A Monte Carlo simulation based on the Geant4 package shows a good agreement with the experimental data.