Scientists at ETH Zurich and EPFL have built and tested a prototype detector that uses advanced camera technology to reconstruct 3D particle tracks inside a large, unsegmented block of scintillator material, according to ScienceDaily.
The system takes inspiration from plenoptic, or light field, cameras, which can record not just the brightness of light but also the direction it comes from. By combining a micro-lens array with a SPAD imaging sensor, the prototype can gather the information needed to estimate where light originated inside the detector.
That approach could offer an alternative to highly segmented particle detectors, which can be precise but expensive and complicated to scale. The new design is aimed at tracking faint signals from weakly interacting particles, including neutrinos and some dark matter candidates.
The researchers tested the detector with light levels ranging from several hundred detected photons down to just five, and also checked whether it could detect electrons generated by a strontium-90 source. They said simulations closely matched the lab measurements, and the team is now developing a new sensor that would give each photon its own time stamp for even better timing precision.
