Simulação da interação de partículas no detector central e dos sinais elétricos gerados pela eletrônica de leitura no Projeto Neutrinos Angra

Abstract

The Neutrinos Angra Project aims to develop a compact detector capable of measuring the antineutrinos flux coming from nuclear reactors. The detector is intended to work on the surface, at sea level. This measurement makes it possible to monitor the reactor’s thermal power in a non-invasive way and independently of the reactor’s control system. The project intends to install the detector to a distance of about 25 meters from the nuclear reactor’s core. The detector and its acquisition and control systems will be placed just outside of the Angra II Reactor, located in the city of Angra dos Reis – RJ, Brazil, inside a container. The detector has been designed to capture photons produced by Cherenkov effect. The detector will be equipped with a total of 48 Photomultipliers used to convert photons to electrical signals. Those signals will be amplified and shaped by a front-end circuitry before they are sent to the acquisition system of the experiment where they will be digitalized to be sent to a group of FPGAs. Once acquired by the FPGAs, the incoming signals can be further processed before being recorded into local computers. This work presents a software which makes use of Monte Carlo Techniques to simulate the main interaction processes occurring inside the target detector of the experiment. The implemented simulation covers from the particles interaction with matter up to the digitalization process occurring just before delivering the electrical signals to FPGAs. This software has been developed to help on the design conception of the detector and on understanding its operational characteristics in detail. The data

generated by this software will be available to be employed on the development of estimation and detection algorithms intended to select the antineutrinos events and to estimate their energy.