Towards AntiMatter-based Nuclear Reactor Tomography and Beyond

Since the discovery of the neutrino in 1956, reactor antineutrinos have been a tool for fundamental neutrino research, a vector for many discoveries, and the framework for pioneering much of today's neutrino detection technology. Indeed, many of the 50s developments are at the core of today's transparent and monolithic neutrino detector exploiting Cherenkov radiation and scintillation. Despite their remarkable success leading, collectively, to several Nobel prizes, those detectors have been limited in terms of their inability to identify the particle impinging on the detector.

This limitation has given shape to the overall experimental methodology for over a century, relying on cumbersome shielding, including deep underground locations, as the only possible solutions. With the invention of LiquidO (2012), detection and topological imaging are now possible, thus overcoming a challenge posed to open up a new generation of physics potential.

For reactors, this implies we may distinguish to unprecedented levels the antineutrino signal (e+; antimatter) from the main backgrounds. The AntiMatter-OTech project, using LiquidO, pioneers a new generation of reactor antineutrino research where antineutrinos will be tagged via their unique antimatter signature (e+ annihilation), thus opening the potential for both industrial reactor monitoring, with direct interest to the IAEA, and fundamental research.

The latter constitutes the complementary neutrino science programme of the CLOUD experiment for the characterisation of reactors using both antineutrinos and, possibly, their unobserved neutrinos. The neutrino sensitivity is so high that the main expected background is solar neutrinos to be detected, for the first time, on the surface location — a possible revolution in neutrino sciences.