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NHPPX Seminars
PPE seminar with Prof. Jeff Hartnell
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Europe/London
506 Kelvin Building
506 Kelvin Building
Description
LiquidO opaque scintillator detectors and the physics opportunities
Radiation detectors enable many aspects of our modern lives, from the
light sensors in our smartphone cameras to PET scanners that inform
treatment of cancer. Particle physicists have often led the development
and exploitation of cutting edge radiation detectors to identify
particles while measuring their energies, positions and directions.
Many radiation detectors use scintillators, which traditionally have
nearly always been transparent to allow detection of the light. Our new
counter-intuitive approach called “LiquidO” is to use highly scattering
opaque scintillator. The opacity causes the light to bounce around close
to where it is produced and then optical fibres extract the light. By
looking at which fibres are hit and how much light each one sees,
precise particle position and directional information can be obtained.
We've demonstrated that our approach outperforms existing scintillator
technology by a factor of two. With further R&D the resolution is
expected to improve by 5-10x, for a similar cost to existing technology.
Or, importantly for some applications, reduce the detector cost by 5-10x
while maintaining the resolution.
There are multiple applications for high-resolution and cost-effective
radiation imaging, from Compton cameras for gamma ray imaging to
precision muon tomography. In particle physics, the CLOUD neutrino
experiment will pioneer new physics measurements using the novel LiquidO opaque scintillator technology.