First Light from Beam Neutrinos on an LAPPD in ANNIE
Abstract
The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) is both a physics experiment and a technology testbed for next-generation light-based neutrino detection. In this paper, we report the first demonstration of a fully integrated Large Area Picosecond Photodetector (LAPPD) operating in a running neutrino beam experiment. Particular focus is given to the design, commissioning, and successful deployment of the Packaged ANNIE LAPPD (PAL), a waterproof, self-triggering module incorporating fast waveform digitization and precision timing synchronized to the ANNIE detector subsystems. We identify beam-correlated LAPPD data frames consistent with charged-current neutrino interactions observed in multiple detector subsystems, establishing the first detection of neutrino-induced Cherenkov light with an LAPPD. These results validate the system-level performance of LAPPDs under realistic experimental conditions-including long-term stability, timing synchronization, and event matching with conventional PMT and muon detector systems-marking a critical step toward their deployment in future large-scale neutrino and particle detectors.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.11111,
title = {First Light from Beam Neutrinos on an LAPPD in ANNIE},
author = {B. W. Adams and S. Abubakar and D. Ajana and M. A. Aman and M. Ascencio-Sosa and A. Augusthy and Z. Bagdasarian and J. Beacom and M. Bergevin and D. Bick and M. Breisch and E. Brunner-Huber and G. Caceres Vera and S. Dazeley and S. Deng and S. Donnelly and S. Doran and E. Drakopoulou and S. Edayath and R. Edwards and J. Eisch and Y. Feng and V. Fischer and R. Foster and S. Gardiner and N. Goehlke and S. Gokhale and A. Gupta and P. Hackspacher and C. Hagner and J. He and B. Kaiser and M. Kandemir and J. Kautz and F. Krennrich and M. Kumar and T. Lachenmaier and F. Lemmons and M. Lucas and D. Maksimovic and M. Malek and J. Martyn and A. Mastbaum and C. McGivern and J. Minock and M. Nieslony and C. Nguyen and M. O'Flaherty and G. D. Orebi Gann and B. K. Ozdemir and T. Pershing and L. Pickard and N. Poonthottathil and E. Pottebaum and C. Reyes and B. Richards and R. Rosero and M. C. Sanchez and D. T. Schmid and M. Smy and H. Sogarwal and M. Stender and A. Sutton and R. Svoboda and C. Sweeney and E. Tiras and M. Vagins and V. Veeraraghavan and J. Wang and A. Weinstein and M. Wetstein and M. Wurm and M. Yeh and T. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.11111},
year = {2026}
}