Development of Neon As a Scintillator For Solar Neutrino Detection

该奖项的资金将用于支持新型低温闪烁体快速发展的探索性研究。这个项目特别紧迫，因为这些闪烁体可能广泛应用于各种已建立的研究课题，如观测低能太阳中微子和探测宇宙暗物质。如果这些闪烁体像预期的那样工作，这项工作对非加速器粒子物理学领域的影响将是深远而直接的。提出的低温闪烁体将由液体或固体氖组成，可能掺杂少量（1%）的氙。凝聚态氖在低背景测量中具有特殊的前景，但它的闪烁产率和光学性质在过去很少受到关注。

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.