Detailed measurements of Hamamatsu R5912 photomultiplier signals are presented, including the single photoelectron charge response, waveform shape, nonlinearity, saturation, overshoot, oscillation, prepulsing, and afterpulsing. The results were used to build a detailed model of the PMT signal characteristics over a wide range of light intensities. Including the PMT model in simulated Daya Bay particle interactions shows no significant systematic effects that are detrimental to the experimental sensitivity.
In reactor neutrino experiments, the analysis of time correlations between different physical events is an important task. Such analysis can help to understand the physical mechanisms of the signal and background events as well as the details of event selection and background estimation. This study investigates a "sampling and mixing" method used for producing large MC data samples for the Daya Bay reactor neutrino experiment. We designed a simple, generic mixing algorithm and generated large MC data samples for physics analysis from several samples according to their respective event rates. Basic plots based on the mixed data are shown.
