A study of the water Cherenkov calorimeter

The novel idea of a Cherenkov calorimeter made of water tanks as the next generation neutrino detector for v factories and v beams is investigated. A water tank prototype with a dimension of 1 x 1 x 13 m(3) is constructed, its performance is studied and compared with a GEANT4 based Monte Carlo simulation. By using measured parameters of the water tank, including the light collection efficiency, attenuation length, angular dependent response, etc., a detailed Monte Carlo simulation demonstrates that the detector performance is excellent for identifying neutrino charged current events while rejecting neutral current and wrong-flavor backgrounds. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.