Theia: An advanced optical neutrino detector
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 exploit these two distinct signals to observe particle direction and species using Cherenkov light while also having the excellent energy resolution and low threshold of a scintillator detector. Situated in a deep underground laboratory, and utilizing new techniques in computing and reconstruction techniques, such a detector could achieve unprecedented levels of background rejection, thus enabling a rich physics program that would span 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, 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 (NLDBD) 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. We consider two scenarios, one in which Theia would reside in a cavern the size and shape of the caverns intended to be excavated for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) which we call Theia 25, and a larger 100 ktonne version (Theia 100) that could achieve an even broader and more sensitive scientific program.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1911.03501,
title = {Theia: An advanced optical neutrino detector},
author = {M. Askins and Z. Bagdasarian and N. Barros and E. W. Beier and E. Blucher and R. Bonventre and E. Callaghan and J. Caravaca and M. Diwan and S. T. Dye and J. Eisch and A. Elagin and T. Enqvist and V. Fischer and K. Frankiewicz and C. Grant and D. Guffanti and C. Hagner and A. Hallin and C. M. Jackson and R. Jiang and T. Kaptanoglu and J. R. Klein and Yu. G. Kolomensky and C. Kraus and F. Krennrich and T. Kutter and T. Lachenmaier and B. Land and K. Lande and J. G. Learned and V. Lozza and L. Ludhova and M. Malek and S. Manecki and J. Maneira and J. Maricic and J. Martyn and A. Mastbaum and C. Mauger and J. Napolitano and B. Naranjo and M. Nieslony and L. Oberauer and G. D. Orebi Gann and J. Ouellet and T. Pershing and S. T. Petcov and L. Picard and R. Rosero and M. Sanchez and J. Sawatzki and S. H. Seo and M. Smiley and M. Smy and A. Stahl and H. Steiger and M. R. Stock and H. Sunej and R. Svoboda and E. Tiras and W. Trzaska and M. Tzanov and M. Vagins and C. Vilela and Z. Wang and J. Wang and M. Wetstein and M. J. Wilking and L. Winslow and P. Wittich and B. Wonsak and E. Worcester and M. Wurm and G. Yang and M. Yeh and E. D. Zimmerman and K. Zuber},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.03501},
year = {2021}
}