Development, characterization and production of a novel water-based liquid scintillator based on the Surfactant TRITON™ X-100

Abstract Water-based Liquid Scintillator (WbLS) is a novel detector medium for particle physics experiments. Applications range from the use as hybrid Cherenkov/scintillation target in low-energy and accelerator neutrino experiments to large-volume neutron vetoes for dark matter detectors. Here we present a WbLS based on well-known components (the surfactant Triton-X, the fluor PPO and vitamin C for long-term stability), with which a new recipe was developed and the result subjected to a thorough characterization of its properties. In addition, based on neutron scattering data we are able to demonstrate that the pulse shape discrimination capabilities of this particular LS are comparable to all-organic LAB based scintillators.