LiquidO‘s R&D effort tackles several different complementary fronts simultaneously:
- LiquidO Detector Prototyping – demonstrate and quantify the overall LiquidO performance.
- Detection Test-Bench – enable the complementary obtaining of data needed for LiquidO detector optimisation and prototype data interpretation, including simulation data tuning.
- Opaque Detection Media Research – explore novel opaque detection material, including scintillators and non-scintillating scenarios.
- Full-Scale Detector Engineering – explore all the technical solutions needed to ensure LiquidO detection can be scaled to multi-ton detectors in terms of readout, structures, etc.
In this way, LiquidO’s R&D can be divided into 2 main phases and their corresponding objectives:
- Phase-I: demonstrating LiquidO in its most basic configuration.
- Phase-II: optimising, and further improvising, LiquidO’s performance by exploring novel dedicated technical solutions natively conceived in LiquidO’s opaque detection framework.
Phase-I‘s most basic configuration means using only proven technology typically already exploited in other experiments, including past transparent detector(s), so that the main focus remains on the LiquidO detection technique itself, despite possible non-optimal performance yet. Historically, this has been our main goal so far and remains today still dominant. The advantage here is the reduced detection parameter phase-space to be explored (i.e. minimal R&D) during Phase-I.
Once proven, the optimisation of the LiquidO performance is the natural target of Phase-II, which is gradually starting as Phase-I‘s main goals are successfully reached. For example, as Phase-I‘s programme of the MINI(e)-Prototype reaches exhaustion, its programme will soon shift into a precise framework for further performance optimisation by exploring new solutions; i.e. Phase-II scope head-on. The accurate definition of Phase-II implies a major (ongoing) brainstorming effort due to its potentially vast scope.