Muon Tracking with the fastest light in the JUNO Central Detector

Abstract: The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) is a multi-purpose neutrino experiment designed to measure the neutrino mass hierarchy using a central detector (CD), which contains 20 kton liquid scintillator (LS) surrounded by about 18,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), located 700~m underground. The rate of cosmic muons reaching the JUNO detector is about 3~Hz and the muon induced neutrons and isotopes are major backgrounds for the neutrino detection. Reconstruction of the muon trajectory in the detector is crucial for the study and rejection of those backgrounds. This paper will introduce the muon tracking algorithm in the JUNO CD, with a least squares method of PMTs' first hit time (FHT). Correction of the FHT for each PMT was found to be important to reduce the reconstruction bias. The spatial resolution and angular resolution are better than 3~cm and 0.4~degree, respectively, and the tracking efficiency is greater than 90\% up to 16~m far from the detector center.