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Title: Theia: an advanced optical neutrino detector

Journal Article · · European Physical Journal. C, Particles and Fields
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  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Forschungszentrum Julich (Germany)
  3. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States); Univ. of Lisbon (Portugal); Lab. de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP), Lisbon (Portugal)
  4. Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States). Enrico Fermi Inst.
  6. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  7. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  8. Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States)
  9. Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Jyvaskyla (Finland)
  11. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
  12. Boston Univ., MA (United States)
  13. Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz (Germany)
  14. Univ. of Hamburg (Germany)
  15. Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB (Canada)
  16. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  17. Laurentian Univ., Sudbury, ON (Canada)
  18. Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (United States)
  19. Univ. Tubingen (Germany)
  20. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  21. Univ. of Lisbon (Portugal); Lab. de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas (LIP), Lisbon (Portugal)
  22. Univ. of Sheffield (United Kingdom)
  23. Laurentian Univ., Sudbury, ON (Canada); Queen's Univ., Kingston, ON (Canada); SNOLAB, Sudbury, ON (Canada)
  24. Rutgers Univ., Piscataway, NJ (United States)
  25. Temple Univ., Philadelphia, PA (United States)
  26. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  27. Technische Univ. Munchen, Garching (Germany)
  28. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  29. Univ. of Tokyo (Japan). Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI); SISSA/INFN, Trieste (Italy)
  30. Inst. of Basic Science, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of)
  31. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
  32. Physikzentrum RWTH Aachen (Germany)
  33. Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
  34. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
  35. Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)
  36. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States)
  37. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  38. Dresden Univ. of Technology (Germany)
+ Show Author Affiliations

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.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704; SC0009999; AC02-05CH11231; NA0003180; FG02-88ER40479; FG02-88ER40893; SC0010504
OSTI ID:
1618342
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1633593; OSTI ID: 1650088; OSTI ID: 1807717
Report Number(s):
BNL-216059-2020-JAAM; TRN: US2201207
Journal Information:
European Physical Journal. C, Particles and Fields, Vol. 80, Issue 5; ISSN 1434-6044
Publisher:
SpringerCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Figures / Tables (29)

Table 1(p. 5)table Table 1
Fig. 1(p. 6)figure Fig. 1
Table 2(p. 7)table Table 2
Fig. 2(p. 10)figure Fig. 2
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Table 3(p. 16)table Table 3
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Table 4(p. 17)table Table 4
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Table 6(p. 22)table Table 6
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Table 7(p. 25)table Table 7
Fig. 18(p. 26)figure Fig. 18
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Fig. 20(p. 28)figure Fig. 20
Fig. 21(p. 28)figure Fig. 21
Table 8(p. 28)table Table 8

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