A neutrino detector is a physics apparatus which is designed to study neutrinos. Because neutrinos only weakly interact with other particles of matter, neutrino detectors must be very large to detect a significant number of neutrinos. Neutrino detectors are often built underground, to isolate the detector from cosmic rays and other background radiation. The field of neutrino astronomy is still very much in its infancy – the only confirmed extraterrestrial sources are the Sun and the supernova 1987A in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. Another likely source (three standard deviations) is the blazar TXS 0506+056 about 3.7 billion light years away. Neutrino observatories will "give astronomers fresh eyes with which to study the universe".
Various detection methods have been used. Super Kamiokande is a large volume of water surrounded by phototubes that watch for the Cherenkov radiation emitted when an incoming neutrino creates an electron or muon in the water. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory was similar, but used heavy water as the detecting medium. Other detectors have consisted of large volumes of chlorine or gallium which are periodically checked for excesses of argon or germanium, respectively, which are created by neutrinos interacting with the original substance. MINOS used a solid plastic scintillator watched by phototubes; Borexino uses a liquid pseudocumene scintillator also watched by phototubes; and the NOνA detector uses a liquid scintillator watched by avalanche photodiodes.
The proposed acoustic detection of neutrinos via the thermoacoustic effect is the subject of dedicated studies done by the ANTARES, IceCube, and KM3NeT collaborations.
Theory Neutrinos are omnipresent in nature: every second, tens of billions of them "pass through every square centimetre of our bodies without us ever noticing." Many were created during the Big Bang, and others are generated by nuclear reactions inside stars, planets, and by other interstellar processes. According to scientists' speculations, some may also originate from events in the universe such as "colliding black holes, gamma ray bursts from exploding stars, and/or violent events at the cores of distant galaxies".
Despite how common they are, neutrinos are extremely difficult to detect, due to their low mass and lack of electric charge. Unlike other particles, neutrinos only interact via gravity and the weak interaction. The two types of weak interactions they (rarely) engage in are neutral current (which involves the exchange of a Z boson and only results in deflection) and charged current (which involves the exchange of a W boson and causes the neutrino to convert into a charged lepton: an electron, a muon, or a tauon, or one of their antiparticles, if an antineutrino). According to the laws of physics neutrinos must have mass, but only a "smidgen of rest mass" – perhaps less than a "millionth as much as an electron" – so the gravitational force caused by neutrinos has so far proved too weak to detect, leaving the weak interaction as the main method of detection: Neutral current In a neutral current interaction, the neutrino enters and then leaves the detector after having transferred some of its energy and momentum to a 'target' particle. If the target particle is charged and sufficiently lightweight (e.g. an electron), it might be accelerated to a relativistic speed and consequently emit Cherenkov radiation, which can be observed directly. All three neutrino flavors, or flavours (electronic, muonic, and tauonic) can participate, regardless of the neutrino energy. However, no neutrino flavor information is left behind. Charged current In a charged current interaction, a high-energy neutrino transforms into its partner lepton (electron, muon, or tauon). However, if the neutrino does not have sufficient energy to create its heavier partner's mass, the charged current interaction is effectively unavailable to it. Neutrinos from the Sun and from nuclear reactors have enough energy to create electrons. Most accelerator-created neutrino beams can also create muons, and a very few can create tauons. A detector which can distinguish among these leptons can reveal the flavor of the neutrino incident to a charged current interaction; because the interaction involves the exchange of a W boson, the 'target' particle also changes (e.g., ).
Detection techniques
Scintillators Antineutrinos were first detected near the Savannah River nuclear reactor by the Cowan–Reines neutrino experiment in 1956. Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan used two targets containing a solution of cadmium chloride in water. Two scintillation detectors were placed next to the water targets. Antineutrinos with an energy above the threshold of 1.8 MeV caused charged current "Inverse beta decay" interactions with the protons in the water, producing positrons and neutrons. The resulting positrons annihilate with electrons, creating pairs of coincident photons with an energy of about 0.5 MeV each, which could be detected by the two scintillation detectors above and below the target. The neutrons were captured by cadmium nuclei, resulting in delayed gamma rays of about 8 MeV that were detected a few microseconds after the photons from a positron annihilation event.
This experiment was designed by Cowan and Reines to give a unique signature for antineutrinos, to prove the existence of these particles. It was not the experimental goal to measure the total antineutrino flux. The detected antineutrinos thus all carried an energy greater than 1.8 MeV, which is the threshold for the reaction channel used (1.8 MeV is the energy needed to create a positron and a neutron from a proton). Only about 3% of the antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor carry enough energy for the reaction to occur.
A more recently built and much larger KamLAND detector used similar techniques to study oscillations of antineutrinos from 53 Japanese nuclear power plants. A smaller, but more radiopure Borexino detector was able to measure the most important components of the neutrino spectrum from the Sun, as well as antineutrinos from Earth and nuclear reactors.
The SNO+ experiment uses linear alkylbenzene as a liquid scintillator, in contrast to its predecessor Sudbury Neutrino Observatory which used heavy water and detected Cherenkov light (see below). Radiochemical methods Chlorine detectors, based on the method suggested by Bruno Pontecorvo, consist of a tank filled with a chlorine-containing fluid such as tetrachloroethylene. A neutrino occasionally converts a chlorine-37 atom into one of argon-37 via the charged current interaction. The threshold neutrino energy for this reaction is 0.814 MeV. The fluid is periodically purged with helium gas which would remove the argon. The helium is then cooled to separate out the argon, and the argon atoms are counted based on their electron capture radioactive decays. A chlorine detector in the former Homestake Mine near Lead, South Dakota, containing 520 short tons (470 metric tons) of fluid, was the first to detect the solar neutrinos, and made the first measurement of the deficit of electron neutrinos from the sun (see Solar neutrino problem).
A similar detector design, with a much lower detection threshold of 0.233 MeV, uses a transformation which is sensitive to lower-energy neutrinos. A neutrino is able to react with an atom of gallium-71, converting it into an atom of the unstable isotope germanium-71. The germanium was then chemically extracted and concentrated. Neutrinos were thus detected by measuring the radioactive decay of germanium.
This latter method is nicknamed the "Alsace-Lorraine" technique in a joke-reference to the reaction sequence.
The SAGE experiment in Russia used about 50 tons of gallium, and the GALLEX / GNO experiments in Italy about 30 tons of gallium as reaction mass. The price of gallium is prohibitive, so this experiment is difficult to afford on large-scale. Larger experiments have therefore turned to a less costly reaction mass.
Radiochemical detection methods are only useful for counting neutrinos; they provide almost no information on neutrino energy or direction of travel.
Cherenkov detectors "Ring-imaging" Cherenkov detectors take advantage of a phenomenon called Cherenkov light. Cherenkov radiation is produced whenever charged particles such as electrons or muons are moving through a given detector medium somewhat faster than the speed of light in that medium. In a Cherenkov detector, a large volume of clear material such as water or ice is surrounded by light-sensitive photomultiplier tubes. A charged lepton produced with sufficient energy and moving through such a detector does travel somewhat faster than the speed of light in the detector medium (although somewhat slower than the speed of light in vacuum). The charged lepton generates a visible "optical shockwave" of Cherenkov radiation. This radiation is detected by the photomultiplier tubes and shows up as a characteristic ring-like pattern of activity in the array of photomultiplier tubes. As neutrinos can interact with atomic nuclei to produce charged leptons which emit Cherenkov radiation, this pattern can be used to infer direction, energy, and (sometimes) flavor information about incident neutrinos.
Two water-filled detectors of this type (Kamiokande and IMB) recorded a neutrino burst from supernova SN 1987A. Scientists detected 19 neutrinos from an explosion of a star inside the Large Magellanic Cloud – only 19 out of the octo-decillion (1057) neutrinos emitted by the supernova. The Kamiokande detector was able to detect the burst of neutrinos associated with this supernova, and in 1988 it was used to directly confirm the production of solar neutrinos. The largest such detector is the water-filled Super-Kamiokande. This detector uses 50,000 tons of pure water surrounded by 11,000 photomultiplier tubes buried 1 km underground.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) used 1,000 tonnes of ultrapure heavy water contained in a 12 metre-diameter vessel made of acrylic plastic surrounded by a cylinder of ultrapure ordinary water 22 metres in diameter and 34 metres high. In addition to the neutrino interactions visible in a regular water detector, a neutrino can break up the deuterium in heavy water. The resulting free neutron is subsequently captured, releasing a burst of gamma rays that can be detected. All three neutrino flavors participate equally in this dissociation reaction.
The MiniBooNE detector employs pure mineral oil as its detection medium. Mineral oil is a natural scintillator, so charged particles without sufficient energy to produce Cherenkov light still produce scintillation light. Low-energy muons and protons, invisible in water, can be detected. Thus the use of natural environment as a measurement medium emerged.
Since the neutrino flux incoming to earth decreases with increasing energy, the size of neutrino detectors must increase too. Though building a kilometer-sized cube detector underground covered by thousands of photomultiplier would be prohibitively expensive, detection volumes of this magnitude can be achieved by installing Cherenkov detector arrays deep inside already existing natural water or ice formations, with several other advantages. Firstly, hundreds of meters of water or ice partly protect the detector from atmospheric muons. Secondly, these environments are transparent and dark, vital criteria in order to detect the faint Cherenkov light. In practice, because of Potassium 40 decay, even the abyss is not completely dark, so this decay must be used as a baseline.