LiquidO opaque scintillator detectors and their physics opportunities

Radiation detectors enable many aspects of our modern lives, from the light sensors in our smartphone cameras to PET scanners that inform treatment of cancer. Particle physicists have often led the development and exploitation of cutting edge radiation detectors to identify particles while measuring their energies, positions and directions. Many radiation detectors use scintillators, which traditionally have nearly always been transparent to allow detection of the light. Our new counter-intuitive approach called “LiquidO” is to use highly scattering opaque scintillator. The opacity causes the light to bounce around close to where it is produced and then optical fibres extract the light. By looking at which fibres are hit and how much light each one sees, precise particle position and directional information can be obtained. We've demonstrated that our approach outperforms existing scintillator technology by a factor of two. With further R&D the resolution is expected to improve by 5-10x, for a similar cost to existing technology. Or, importantly for some applications, reduce the detector cost by 5-10x while maintaining the resolution. There are multiple applications for high-resolution and cost-effective radiation imaging, from Compton cameras for gamma ray imaging to precision muon tomography. In particle physics, the CLOUD neutrino experiment will pioneer new physics measurements using the novel LiquidO opaque scintillator technology.

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