Por Anatael Cabrera (CNRS-IN2P3 / Université Paris-Saclay).
For decades, radiation detection has been critical to humankind, including the experimental core basis of much of our understanding of the Universe. Most light-based detection technologies, such as the popular scintillation, rely on a key implicit principle: the impeccable transparency of the medium so that detection is possible even with a handful of photons. This condition turns extreme when considering the largest instrumented volumes, such as those used in neutrino physics. Much of that technology has yielded renowned historical success, including many discoveries and Nobel prizes. Yet, that same technology is known to suffer from some key limitations, even after about almost 100 years of maturity towards perfection. Indeed, particle identification is improvable. Else, experiments are forced to rely on cumbersome and expensive shielding setups, including, in some extreme cases, overburden in deep underground laboratories to mitigate the otherwise overwhelming cosmic-ray-related backgrounds. In this seminar, I shall introduce the novel LiquidO technology that relies heavily on light detection in “opaque” media for the first time. Its goal is to enable sub-atomic particle event-wise imaging so event topology and fast-timing may be used for particle ID purposes even at a fraction of the MeV energy. The seminar will finish with the highlights of the first LiquidO-based experiments, namely the AntiMatterOTech (EIC+UKRI) and the CLOUD experiments.
