Measurement of muon induced neutron background at shallow sites

Abstract

Cosmic muon induced neutrons are a major source of background for low countrate experiments like neutrino oscillation or dark matter searches. Especially at shallow sites these neutrons are the limiting factor for the ultimate sensitivity of the measurement. Measurements of the neutron rate and counter measures including active veto and passive shielding of the detector are discussed for two neutrino oscillation experiments at shallow sites: the KARMEN accelerator based experiment at RAL and the PALO VERDE reactor experiment.

Talk given at the IDM 2002 conference, York, September 2002