A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors

Cherenkov 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-...

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Main Authors: Lin, Xiao, Hu, Hao, Easo, Sajan, Yang, Yi, Shen, Yichen, Yin, Kezhen, Blago, Michele Piero, Kaminer, Ido, Zhang, Baile, Chen, Hongsheng, Joannopoulos, John, Soljačić, Marin, Luo, Yu
Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2022
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154597
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
id sg-ntu-dr.10356-154597
record_format dspace
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics
Nanophotonics and Plasmonics
Imaging and Sensing
spellingShingle Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics
Nanophotonics and Plasmonics
Imaging and Sensing
Lin, Xiao
Hu, Hao
Easo, Sajan
Yang, Yi
Shen, Yichen
Yin, Kezhen
Blago, Michele Piero
Kaminer, Ido
Zhang, Baile
Chen, Hongsheng
Joannopoulos, John
Soljačić, Marin
Luo, Yu
A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
description Cherenkov 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 onedimensional 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.
author2 School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
author_facet School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Lin, Xiao
Hu, Hao
Easo, Sajan
Yang, Yi
Shen, Yichen
Yin, Kezhen
Blago, Michele Piero
Kaminer, Ido
Zhang, Baile
Chen, Hongsheng
Joannopoulos, John
Soljačić, Marin
Luo, Yu
format Article
author Lin, Xiao
Hu, Hao
Easo, Sajan
Yang, Yi
Shen, Yichen
Yin, Kezhen
Blago, Michele Piero
Kaminer, Ido
Zhang, Baile
Chen, Hongsheng
Joannopoulos, John
Soljačić, Marin
Luo, Yu
author_sort Lin, Xiao
title A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
title_short A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
title_full A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
title_fullStr A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
title_full_unstemmed A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors
title_sort brewster route to cherenkov detectors
publishDate 2022
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154597
_version_ 1759858208542818304
spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1545972023-02-28T19:59:47Z A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors Lin, Xiao Hu, Hao Easo, Sajan Yang, Yi Shen, Yichen Yin, Kezhen Blago, Michele Piero Kaminer, Ido Zhang, Baile Chen, Hongsheng Joannopoulos, John Soljačić, Marin Luo, Yu School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies (CDPT) Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics Nanophotonics and Plasmonics Imaging and Sensing Cherenkov 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 onedimensional 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. Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Ministry of Education (MOE) National Research Foundation (NRF) Published version The work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) under Grants No. 61625502, No. 11961141010, No. 62175212, and No. 61975176, the Top-Notch Young Talents Program of China, Zhejiang University Global Partnership Fund, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2021FZZX001- 19). Y.L. was sponsored in part by the Singapore Ministry of Education (No. MOE2018- T2-2-189 (S)), A*Star AME IRG grant (No. A20E5c0095), and Programmatic Funds (No. A18A7b0058), National Research Foundation Singapore Competitive Research Program (No. NRF-CRP22-2019-0006 and NRF-CRP23-2019-0007). B.Z. was sponsored in part by Singapore Ministry of Education (No. MOE2018-T2-1-022 (S), MOE2016-T3-1-006, and MOE2019-T2-2-085). I.K. was sponsored in part by the Azrieli Faculty Fellowship, the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 831/19), and the European Research Council (Starter Grant no. 851780). This material is based upon work supported in part by the US Army Research Office through the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, under Contract No. W911NF-18-2-0048, and by the Binational USA-Israel Science Foundation (BSF) 2018288. 2022-01-03T02:30:56Z 2022-01-03T02:30:56Z 2021 Journal Article Lin, X., Hu, H., Easo, S., Yang, Y., Shen, Y., Yin, K., Blago, M. P., Kaminer, I., Zhang, B., Chen, H., Joannopoulos, J., Soljačić, M. & Luo, Y. (2021). A Brewster route to Cherenkov detectors. Nature Communications, 12, 5554-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25822-x 2041-1723 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154597 10.1038/s41467-021-25822-x 12 5554 en MOE2018- T2-2-189 (S) A20E5c0095 A18A7b0058 NRF-CRP22-2019-0006 NRF-CRP23-2019-0007 MOE2018-T2-1-022 (S) MOE2016-T3-1-006 MOE2019-T2-2-085 Nature Communications 10.21979/N9/4WB7AF © 2021 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. application/pdf