A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
Name
s41467-021-25822-x.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.66 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e06fadc3e4eb464820eb07e7003a124f
Author(s)
Lin, Xiao
Hu, Hao
Easo, Sajan
Yang, Yi
Shen, Yichen
Yin, Kezhen
Blago, Michele Piero
Kaminer, Ido
Zhang, Baile
Chen, Hongsheng
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Lin, Xiao, Hu, Hao, Easo, Sajan, Yang, Yi, Shen, Yichen et al. 2021. "A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors." Nature Communications, 12 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
AbstractCherenkov detectors enable a valuable tool to identify high-energy particles. However, their sensitivity and momentum coverage are limited by the refractive index of host materials. Especially, identifying particles with energy above multiple gigaelectronvolts requires host materials with a near-unity refractive index, which are limited to bulky gas chambers. Overcoming this fundamental material limit is important for future particle detectors yet remains a long-standing challenge. Here, we propose a different paradigm for Cherenkov detectors that utilizes the broadband angular filter made from stacks of variable one-dimensional photonic crystals. Owing to the Brewster effect, the angular filter is transparent only to Cherenkov photons from a precise incident angle. Particle identification is achieved by mapping each Cherenkov angle to the peak-intensity position of transmitted photons in the detection plane. Such angular filtering effect, although decreases the photon number collected in the detection plane, enables the realization of a non-dispersive pseudo refractive index over the entire visible spectrum. Moreover, the pseudo refractive index can be flexibly designed to different values close to unity. Our angular-selective Brewster paradigm offers a feasible solution to implement compact and highly sensitive Cherenkov detectors especially in beam lines with a small angular divergence using regular dielectrics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-021-25822-X
