Theia: An advanced optical neutrino detector
Creators: name: Askins, M.
name: Bagdasarian, Z.
name: Barros, N.
name: Beier, E. W.
name: Blucher, E.
name: Bonventre, R.
name: Callaghan, E.
name: Caravaca, J.
name: Diwan, M.
name: Dye, S. T.
name: Eisch, J.
name: Elagin, A.
name: Enqvist, T.
name: Fischer, V.
name: Frankiewicz, K.
name: Grant, C.
name: Guffanti, D.
name: Hagner, C.
name: Hallin, A.
name: Jackson, C. M.
name: Jiang, R.
name: Kaptanoglu, T.
name: Klein, J. R.
name: Kolomensky, Yu. G.
name: Kraus, C.
name: Krennrich, F.
name: Kutter, T.
name: Lachenmaier, T.
name: Land, B.
name: Lande, K.
name: Learned, J. G.
name: Lozza, V.
name: Ludhova, L.
name: Malek, M.
name: Manecki, S.
name: Maneira, J.
name: Maricic, J.
name: Martyn, J.
name: Mastbaum, A.
name: Mauger, C.
name: Napolitano, J.
name: Naranjo, B.
name: Nieslony, M.
name: Oberauer, L.
name: Gann, G. D. Orebi
name: Ouellet, J.
name: Pershing, T.
name: Petcov, S. T.
name: Picard, L.
name: Rosero, R.
name: Sanchez, M.
name: Sawatzki, J.
name: Seo, S. H.
name: Smiley, M.
name: Smy, M.
name: Stahl, A.
name: Steiger, H.
name: Stock, M. R.
name: Sunej, H.
name: Svoboda, R.
name: Tiras, E.
name: Trzaska, W.
name: Tzanov, M.
name: Vagins, M.
name: Vilela, C.
name: Wang, Z.
name: Wang, J.
name: Wetstein, M.
name: Wilking, M. J.
name: Winslow, L.
name: Wittich, P.
name: Wonsak, B.
name: Worcester, E.
name: Wurm, M.
name: Yang, G.
name: Yeh, M.
name: Zimmerman, E. D.
name: Zuber, K.
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2019
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det)
subject: High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex)
subject: Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: New developments in liquid scintillators, high-efficiency, fast photon detectors, and chromatic photon sorting have opened up the possibility for building a large-scale detector that can discriminate between Cherenkov and scintillation signals. Such a detector could exploit these two distinct signals to observe particle direction and species using Cherenkov light while also having the excellent energy resolution and low threshold of a scintillator detector. Situated in a deep underground laboratory, and utilizing new techniques in computing and reconstruction techniques, such a detector could achieve unprecedented levels of background rejection, thus enabling a rich physics program that would span topics in nuclear, high-energy, and astrophysics, and across a dynamic range from hundreds of keV to many GeV. The scientific program would include observations of low- and high-energy solar neutrinos, determination of neutrino mass ordering and measurement of the neutrino CP violating phase, observations of diffuse supernova neutrinos and neutrinos from a supernova burst, sensitive searches for nucleon decay and, ultimately, a search for NeutrinoLess Double Beta Decay (NLDBD) with sensitivity reaching the normal ordering regime of neutrino mass phase space. This paper describes Theia, a detector design that incorporates these new technologies in a practical and affordable way to accomplish the science goals described above. We consider two scenarios, one in which Theia would reside in a cavern the size and shape of the caverns intended to be excavated for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) which we call Theia 25, and a larger 100 ktonne version (Theia 100) that could achieve an even broader and more sensitive scientific program.