Undergraduate Research at Jefferson Lab

Light Yield Measurements of Heavy Photon Search (HPS) Muon Scintillator Hodoscopes

Student: Marianne Skolnik

School: Muhlenberg College

Mentored By: Stepan Stepanyan

The Heavy Photon Search (HPS) is an experiment that will search for new heavy vector boson(s). We are interested in finding the light yield for the scintillator - wavelength-shifting fiber coupling that will be used in the proposed muon hodoscope for the HPS. In order to reduce the background, a cut will be made on the signal. Precision of this cut depends on the average number of photoelectrons, Npe. In this new muon hodoscope the scintillators will have WLS fibers glued with optical epoxy, which, allows more light, changing Npe. To find Npe, data are analyzed using ROOT macros. Result of this measurement suggests that light yield form glued fibers is higher than from WLS fibers without glue by a factor of ~1.7.