Development of Neon As a Scintillator For Solar Neutrino Detection

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Funds from this award will support exploratory research for the rapiddevelopment of novel cryogenic scintillators. This project has specialurgency because of the potential broad application of thesescintillators to a variety of established research topics, such as theobservation of low energy solar neutrinos and the detection of cosmicdark matter. If these scintillators work as well as expected, theimpact of this work on the field of non-accelerator particle physicswould be profound and immediate. The proposed cryogenic scintillatorwould consist of liquid or solid neon, possibly doped with a smallamount (1%) of xenon. Condensed neon holds special promise forlow-background measurements, but its scintillation yield and opticalproperties have received scant attention in the past.