Spectral modeling of scintillator for the NEMO-3 and SuperNEMO detectors

We have constructed a GEANT4-based detailed software model of photon transport in plastic scintillator blocks and have used it to study the NEMO-3 and SuperNEMO calorimeters employed in experiments designed to search for neutrinoless double beta decay. We compare our simulations to measurements using conversion electrons from a calibration source of $\rm ^{207}Bi$ and show that the agreement is improved if wavelength-dependent properties of the calorimeter are taken into account. In this article, we briefly describe our modeling approach and results of our studies.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure

Systematic study on

Within the framework of the proximity formalism, we present a systematic study to analyze the effects of the $$\alpha$$-decay energy through the effective sharp radius parameter on the $$\alpha$$-decay half-lives of 227 nuclei in the range $$61 \le Z \le 99$$. Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) calculations with the proximity potential Zhang 2013 are carried out to obtain the theoretical values of the $$\alpha$$-decay half-lives. In this work, we introduce a new $$Q_{\alpha }$$-dependent (QD) form of the effective sharp radius which significantly reduces the standard deviation of estimated half-lives using the Zhang 2013 model in comparison with the corresponding experimental data in our selected mass range. We evaluate the validity of this simple formula using the Geiger-Nuttall (G-N) plots and semi-empirical formulas. The modified form of the Zhang 2013 model is also found to work well in $$\alpha$$-decay studies of superheavy nuclei (SHN) with $$Z=117-120$$. Our results reveal that the calculated half-lives for the use of new proposed form of the effective sharp radius in the proximity potential can reproduce the closed-shell effects at neutron magic number $$N=126$$ and $$N=184$$