Deep underground in a Canadian mine, a tank of liquid scintillator is about to get smarter at catching the faintest ghost particles in the universe. Neutrinos barely interact with matter, making them notoriously difficult to study. Current liquid scintillator detectors—tanks of special liquid that flash when a neutrino passes through—are excellent at catching low-energy neutrinos but struggle to pinpoint where the flash came from or what type of particle caused it. This project tackles that weakness head-on. The researcher will develop new analysis methods that extract directional and particle-type information from the exact timing of each light flash, then test these methods on real data from the SNO+ detector. Separately, they will experiment with loading more isotope into the scintillator liquid—a step needed to search for neutrinoless double-beta decay, a process that would reveal whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle. This is fundamental science. Success would not change your daily life tomorrow. But it could sharpen the sensitivity of neutrino detectors worldwide, potentially allowing physicists to see new solar neutrino signals or confirm whether neutrinos break a fundamental rule of particle physics. Past improvements in neutrino detection have led to unexpected advances in reactor monitoring and geological imaging.
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Liquid scintillators have been a key technology in the field of neutrino physics for decades. They are especially well suited for the detection of low energy neutrinos due to their high light yield and proportional response particle energy, cost effectiveness, high purity, and volume versatility. However, liquid scintillator detectors have poorer position and energy vertex resolutions, and lower capabilities for particle identification, when compared with other technologies. In order to allow for new discoveries in neutrino physics, such as searching for neutrinoless double-beta decay or the measurement of low-energy solar neutrinos, it is imperative to evolve the liquid scintillator technology and find novel ways to deal with its current drawbacks. This proposal aims to advance the state-of-the-art of liquid scintillator detectors through the development of creative particle identification analysis methods and innovative liquid scintillator R&D. The developed methods will be used to improve and strengthen the low-energy neutrino analyses in SNO+, a leading liquid scintillator experiment located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, Canada. I will demonstrate an analysis framework capable of retrieving directional and particle type information from the scintillation light time profile, and use it to perform pioneering low-energy measurements of 8-B solar neutrinos. Secondly, I will lead liquid scintillator prototype work aimed at establishing higher isotope loadings as feasible options for future neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments, including future phases of SNO+, while also exploring new and practical detector designs using simulations. With the proposed work, I will be able to devise a strategy to significantly advance the technological development of future liquid scintillator detectors, improving the sensitivity of instruments and opening up important new areas of application, providing a valuable guide for the future efforts of the neutrino physics community.
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