Detection of low enersy solar neutrinos by a two-phase cryosenic e-bubble detector

• Published in: Chinese science bulletin Vol. 52; no. 21; pp. 3011 - 3015
• Main Author: JU YongLin GU Yan J. DODD R. GALEA M. LELTCHOUK W. WILLIS P. REHAK V. TCHERNIATINE
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2007
• Subjects: 低温探测器; 太阳微中子; 电子泡沫
• ISSN: 1001-6538; 1861-9541

A new two-phase cryogenic neutrino detector using electron bubble （e-bubble） specifically in liquid helium is proposed and being developed for real time, high rate measurements of low-energy p-p reac- tion neutrinos from the sun. The e-bubble detector is a time projection chamber-like （TPC） tracking detector. The task of such a neutrino detector is to detect the ionization of the elastically scattered target electrons by incident neutrinos, and then to characterize their energy and direction and to dis- tinguish them from radioactive backgrounds. The ionization signals are expected to be small and hence undergo avalanche amplification in the saturated vapor above the liquid phase by gas electron multi- pliers （GEMs） at high gain. Higher granularity and intrinsically suppressed ion feedback give a good spatial resolution and are the major advantages of this technology. It should be possible to construct such a detector to track charged particles down to 100--200 keV in a massive liquid helium target with fractional millimeter spatial resolution in three-dimensional space, using the GEM-based TPC with a high-resolution CCD camera, for both the electronic and light readout.