Physics Colloquium, October 3, 2006
Something old, something new: Resurrecting Detector Technologies in Astroparticle and Neutrino Physics Juan Collar

The University of Chicago

The old adage "There is nothing new under the sky" bears a certain element of truth when applied to the field of Radiation Detection. Techniques may fall into disuse, replaced by newer ones, but they keep coming back as the need arises, profiting from the technological advances that took place in the interim. We will discuss two projects that illustrate this point: the development of ultra-stable bubble chambers sensitive to the rare nuclear recoils expected from particle dark matter interactions, and a new generation of solid state detectors with very promising applications in neutrino physics (coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering and double-beta decay).

4:00 p.m., Physics Research Building (PRB), Room 1080

Reception at 3:45 p.m., Atrium, PRB