The LiquidO prototyping strategy relies on the careful design and construction of several detectors aiming to demonstrate the LiquidO detection technique and quantify its expected performance. The detector design has been done such that simulation can be tuned upon, but it is not necessary for the overall demonstration and quantification. In fact, all detectors are temperature controlled to ensure running in transparent and opaque scenarios, which implies liquid and solid phases.
The LiquidO main prototype detectors follow an incremental staged strategy where detectors’ size gradually increased toward a realist LiquidO detector, including the engineering solution. The prototype detectors so far are:
- Micro-LiquidO Detector (referred to as the “micro“). Size: ~0.3L (≤6cm).
- Mini(e)-LiquidO Detector (referred to as the “mini“). Size: ~10L (≤20cm).
- Mini(γ)-LiquidO Detector (referred to as the “mini-γ“). Size: ~100L (≤50cm).
While the micro was designed to achieve a first LiquidO experimental demonstration (successful and published in Nature’s “Communications Physics” journal – see our references), the mini detector generation was designed to explore the details of the LiquidO event topology (i.e. the stochastic light confinement) for the first time as well as yielding first performance quantification such as calorimetry, timing, etc. Again, the mini detector has already successfully demonstrated further the stochastic light confinement in preliminary results provided in the Neutrino-2022 conference (see our references). The different detectors’ ability to explore the details of the event topology is constrained by their size. So the mini detector size is limited to contain a single-point-like light-ball, formed upon the injection of single-electrons with controlled energy up to 2MeV. Only the mini-γ can explore extended event topologies in the scale of 0.5m equipped length as a maximal limitation.
All detectors are endowed with a common powerful readout (light and electronics), including sub-100ps capable front-end systems and waveform digitisers (WaveCatcher and SAMPIC) to explore exhaustively LiquidO timing potential and maximise inter-detector relative comparison and cross-validation of results.
The incremental size scaling of the prototyping strategy also enables the testing of the ultimate full detector scale engineering solutions, which are implemented mainly in the mini-γ system. Details on the different detectors’ goals, performance and achievements are provided on the corresponding websites, above indicated.