Quantitative History of Neutrino Detectors

Inspired by the famous plot from M. Stanley Livingston showing accelerator center-of-mass energy as a function of time, our plots show the progressions of neutrino detector fiducial mass and interaction vertex resolution.

The history and future of neutrino detectors is an exciting story for particle physicists designing and improving these detectors. We extracted and estimated two quantities characteristic of all neutrino detectors spanning back to the first neutrino observation. These two quantities – position resolution and detector mass – plotted on the log scale, tell a tale of technological growth, scientific priorities, and scientific mastery.

Experiments did not always prioritize documenting or knowing these quantities, so we developed estimation methods to calculate these quantities. Spanning engineering, chemistry, and particle physics, these estimation techniques bolstered direct quotations and consistency checks. For more info on the dataset and our methodology, see our original presentation here.

What’s the latest?

This work is being prepared for early 2024 publication with student Adam Rothman (Carleton College, MN) and Dr. Adam Lister (University of Wisconsin, Madison).

This work began as a part of the 2017 International Neutrino Summer School at Fermilab. Thanks to Professor Mark Messier for the idea and to original collaborators including Dr. Lister, Dr. Shivesh Mandalia, James Ellison, and David Friant.

Check it out on github.