% IMPORTANT: The following is UTF-8 encoded. This means that in the presence % of non-ASCII characters, it will not work with BibTeX 0.99 or older. % Instead, you should use an up-to-date BibTeX implementation like “bibtex8” or % “biber”. @ARTICLE{Basilico:1038442, author = {Basilico, D. and Bellini, G. and Benziger, J. and Biondi, R. and Caccianiga, B. and Calaprice, F. and Caminata, A. and Chepurnov, A. and D’Angelo, D. and Derbin, A. and Di Giacinto, A. and Di Marcello, V. and Ding, X. F. and Di Ludovico, A. and Di Noto, L. and Drachnev, I. and Franco, D. and Galbiati, C. and Ghiano, C. and Giammarchi, M. and Goretti, A. and Gromov, M. and Guffanti, D. and Ianni, Aldo and Ianni, Andrea and Jany, A. and Kobychev, V. and Korga, G. and Kumaran, S. and Laubenstein, M. and Litvinovich, E. and Lombardi, P. and Lomskaya, I. and Ludhova, L. and Machulin, I. and Martyn, J. and Meroni, E. and Miramonti, L. and Misiaszek, M. and Muratova, V. and Nugmanov, R. and Oberauer, L. and Orekhov, V. and Ortica, F. and Pallavicini, M. and Pelicci, L. and Penek, Ö. and Pietrofaccia, L. and Pilipenko, N. and Pocar, A. and Raikov, G. and Ranalli, M. T. and Ranucci, G. and Razeto, A. and Re, A. and Rossi, N. and Schönert, S. and Semenov, D. and Settanta, G. and Skorokhvatov, M. and Singhal, A. and Smirnov, O. and Sotnikov, A. and Tartaglia, R. and Testera, G. and Unzhakov, E. and Vishneva, A. and Vogelaar, R. B. and von Feilitzsch, F. and Wojcik, M. and Wurm, M. and Zavatarelli, S. and Zuber, K. and Zuzel, G.}, title = {{O}ptimized α / β pulse shape discrimination in {B}orexino}, journal = {Physical review / D}, volume = {109}, number = {11}, issn = {2470-0010}, address = {Ridge, NY}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, reportid = {FZJ-2025-01438}, pages = {112014}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Borexino could efficiently distinguish between 𝛼 and 𝛽 radiation in its liquid scintillator by the characteristic time profile of its scintillation pulse. This 𝛼/𝛽 discrimination, first demonstrated on the ton scale in the counting test facility prototype, was used throughout the lifetime of the experiment between 2007 and 2021. With this method, the 𝛼 events are identified and subtracted from the solar neutrino events similar to 𝛽. This is particularly important in liquid scintillators, as the 𝛼 scintillation is strongly quenched. In Borexino, the prominent 210 Po decay peak was a background in the energy range of electrons scattered from 7 Be solar neutrinos. Optimal 𝛼/𝛽 discrimination was achieved with a multilayer perceptron neural network, with a higher ability to leverage the timing information of the scintillation photons detected by the photomultiplier tubes. An event-by-event, high efficiency, stable, and uniform pulse shape discrimination was essential in characterizing the spatial distribution of background in the detector. This benefited most Borexino measurements, including solar neutrinos in the 𝑝𝑝 chain and the first direct observation of the CNO cycle in the Sun. This paper presents key milestones in 𝛼/𝛽 discrimination in Borexino as a term of comparison for current and future large liquid scintillator detectors.}, cin = {IKP-2}, ddc = {530}, cid = {I:(DE-Juel1)IKP-2-20111104}, pnm = {612 - Cosmic Matter in the Laboratory (POF4-612)}, pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-612}, typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16}, UT = {WOS:001252569300001}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.109.112014}, url = {https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1038442}, }