Theia: an advanced optical neutrino detector

Authors

M. Askins, University of California, Berkeley
Z. Bagdasarian, Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ)
N. Barros, University of Pennsylvania
E. W. Beier, University of Pennsylvania
E. Blucher, The Enrico Fermi Institute
R. Bonventre, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
E. Bourret, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
E. J. Callaghan, University of California, Berkeley
J. Caravaca, University of California, Berkeley
M. Diwan, Brookhaven National Laboratory
S. T. Dye, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
J. Eisch, Iowa State University
A. Elagin, The Enrico Fermi Institute
T. Enqvist, University of Jyväskylä
V. Fischer, University of California, Davis
K. Frankiewicz, Boston University
C. Grant, Boston University
D. Guffanti, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
C. Hagner, Universität Hamburg
A. Hallin, University of Alberta
C. M. Jackson, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
R. Jiang, The Enrico Fermi Institute
T. Kaptanoglu, University of Pennsylvania
J. R. Klein, University of Pennsylvania
Yu G. Kolomensky, University of California, Berkeley
C. Kraus, Laurentian University
F. Krennrich, Iowa State University
T. Kutter, Louisiana State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2020

Abstract

New developments in liquid scintillators, high-efficiency, fast photon detectors, and chromatic photon sorting have opened up the possibility for building a large-scale detector that can discriminate between Cherenkov and scintillation signals. Such a detector could reconstruct particle direction and species using Cherenkov light while also having the excellent energy resolution and low threshold of a scintillator detector. Situated deep underground, and utilizing new techniques in computing and reconstruction, this detector could achieve unprecedented levels of background rejection, enabling a rich physics program spanning topics in nuclear, high-energy, and astrophysics, and across a dynamic range from hundreds of keV to many GeV. The scientific program would include observations of low- and high-energy solar neutrinos, determination of neutrino mass ordering and measurement of the neutrino CP-violating phase δ, observations of diffuse supernova neutrinos and neutrinos from a supernova burst, sensitive searches for nucleon decay and, ultimately, a search for neutrinoless double beta decay, with sensitivity reaching the normal ordering regime of neutrino mass phase space. This paper describes Theia, a detector design that incorporates these new technologies in a practical and affordable way to accomplish the science goals described above.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

European Physical Journal C

Recommended Citation

Askins, M., Bagdasarian, Z., Barros, N., Beier, E., Blucher, E., Bonventre, R., Bourret, E., Callaghan, E., Caravaca, J., Diwan, M., Dye, S., Eisch, J., Elagin, A., Enqvist, T., Fischer, V., Frankiewicz, K., Grant, C., Guffanti, D., Hagner, C., Hallin, A., Jackson, C., Jiang, R., Kaptanoglu, T., Klein, J., Kolomensky, Y., Kraus, C., Krennrich, F., & Kutter, T. (2020). Theia: an advanced optical neutrino detector. European Physical Journal C, 80 (5) https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-020-7977-8