Measurement of Cosmic-ray Muons and Muon-induced Neutrons in the Aberdeen Tunnel Underground Laboratory


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We have measured the muon flux and production rate of muon-induced neutrons at a depth of 611 m water equivalent. Our apparatus comprises three layers of crossed plastic scintillator hodoscopes for tracking the incident cosmic-ray muons and 760 L of gadolinium-doped liquid scintillator for producing and detecting neutrons. The vertical muon intensity was measured to be $I_{mu} = (5.7 pm 0.6) times 10^{-6}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$sr$^{-1}$. The yield of muon-induced neutrons in the liquid scintillator was determined to be $Y_{n} = (1.19 pm 0.08 (stat) pm 0.21 (syst)) times 10^{-4}$ neutrons/($mucdot$g$cdot$cm$^{-2}$). A fit to the recently measured neutron yields at different depths gave a mean muon energy dependence of $leftlangle E_{mu} rightrangle^{0.76 pm 0.03}$ for liquid-scintillator targets.

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