State-of-the-art particle detectors based on organic liquid scintillator (LS) are currently limited by poor spatial resolution, which prevents to reconstruct the ionization pattern generated by charged particle present in the final state of rare processes. LS technology has many advantages, such as (1) being easily scalable, that is, no need for expensive cryostats or strong electric fields in the detection volume; (2) being versatile, since new interactions can be endowed by loading the LS with heavy metals; and (3) being well suited for electron-gamma discrimination at low energy thanks to the LS low photofraction. However, despite all these advantages, poor spatial resolution is currently limiting the application of LS technology to future low background experiments.
The detection technology developed in this project goes beyond the state of the art by dramatically improving the spatial resolution of LS detectors, hence allowing to fully disentangle the energy depositions of final state particles produced in elusive interactions. This feature is pivotal to discriminate between signal and background processes, and is expected to play a major role in the design of future experiments studying rare processes in the quest to advance our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics.
The main achievement of this action was to have a viable solution for all the aspects of the new detection technique, to have a complete understanding of its physics reach, and to seed its experimental validation which is currently ongoing.
This project is expected to have an impact primarily in terms of basic science. Namely, to have future particle detectors targeting rare processes employing the technique developed in this project to improve their background rejection capability, hence boosting their sensitivity to the detection of new physics.
