22.11.2024R&D of neutrino and dark matter detectors read out by microscopy featured in "Physics Today"

"What if a mineral could reveal what it’s seen over the millions—or billions—of years it’s been sitting deep within Earth? An interdisciplinary global network of scientists is reviving efforts to unlock the secrets that minerals hold. The top goals are to identify dark matter, learn more about neutrinos, and use both as cosmological probes."

In this article, Physics Today journalist Toni Feder describes the efforts of a U.S.-European multi-institutional initiative, including our group, to detect neutrinos and darkmatter. The article details our work on imaging color centers in transparent crystals using the benchtop mesoSPIM, developed by our UZH collaborator Dr. Nikita Vladimirov from the URPP Adaptive Brain Circuits in Development and Learning department.

This work is the focus of the UZH Postdoc grant awarded to our group member Gabriela Araujo and is performed in close collaboration with Prof. Patrick Huber from Virginia Tech, as part of the PALEOCCENE collaboration. Key measurements described in the article, such as fluorescent tracks induced by alpha particles and neutrons in transparent crystals, were recently presented at the Applied Antineutrino Physics Workshop 2024 and will soon be published in an upcoming paper.