Comprehensive study of cosmogenic neutron production in large liquid scintillator detectors

Abstract Neutrons produced by cosmic ray muons constitute a significant background for underground experiments investigating neutron oscillations, neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter, and other rare event signals. This work benchmarks measured neutron yields and neutron multiplicities—with a focus on data from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment—against comprehensive simulations using three GEANT4 hadronic physics lists. These simulations are further refined via a TALYS-based adjustment of hadronic cross sections. For the BERT-based models, the adjustment reduces the discrepancy in the total neutron yield from about 20% to approximately 6%, while for the BIC-based model it improves the agreement from roughly 13% to the sub-percent level ( $$\sim $$ ∼ 0.3%), indicating markedly better consistency of the BIC-based model with the experimental data. Nevertheless, a clear tension persists: simulations systematically underproduce single-neutron events while overproducing multi-neutron events. The study establishes a reproducible benchmark for cosmogenic neutron modeling and proposes a targeted refinement strategy—including channel-specific reweighting and intranuclear cascade parameter tuning—to guide future model development.