CPAD 2025 at Penn

Imaging nuclear recoils with light sheet microscopy

8 Oct 2025, 17:30

20m

Inn at Penn, University of Pennsylvania

Parallel session talk RDC 7 Low-Background Detectors RDC 7 Low-Background Detectors

Speaker

Sam Hedges (Virginia Tech)

Description

Nuclear recoils can produce stable optically-active color centers in many common materials. Advances in light-sheet microscopy now allow rapid large-volume imaging of these materials with micrometer-scale resolution. We present the development of the mesoSPIM light sheet microscope at Virginia Tech, designed for imaging particle tracks relevant to nuclear and high-energy physics, including neutrino, dark matter, and neutron interactions. We discuss challenges and opportunities of this detection approach, and present commissioning data from the VT mesoSPIM.