WASHINGTON, July 17: Researchers have developed a new particle detector called PLATON that can track invisible particles in three dimensions using a single block of light-producing material, potentially replacing millions of tiny detector components used in current systems.
The technology combines a light-field camera, highly sensitive photon sensors, and artificial intelligence to reconstruct particle paths with high speed and precision. According to simulations, PLATON could match or exceed the performance of today’s leading particle detectors while being significantly easier to build and scale. The innovation could also improve medical imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET).
The approach is particularly promising for detecting weakly interacting particles, including neutrinos and some dark matter candidates, which rarely interact with ordinary matter and are notoriously difficult to observe.
Most particle physics experiments rely on scintillators—materials that emit tiny flashes of light when struck by charged particles. Conventional detectors divide these materials into millions of small segments connected by optical fibers and photon sensors to determine where particles passed through.
While highly accurate, such systems are difficult and expensive to scale. For example, Japan’s T2K neutrino experiment uses roughly two million scintillator cubes and 60,000 optical fibers, while experiments at CERN and the Paul Scherrer Institute rely on millions of scintillating fibers to achieve sub-millimeter precision.
Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have proposed a different solution. Instead of dividing the detector into countless segments, PLATON uses advanced camera technology to reconstruct where light originates inside a large, unsegmented block of scintillator material.
The prototype and supporting simulations were recently published in Nature Communications.
The detector is inspired by plenoptic, or light-field, cameras, which capture not only the intensity of light but also the direction from which it arrives. This allows the system to reconstruct three-dimensional images.
PLATON combines a micro-lens array with a SwissSPAD2 imaging sensor capable of detecting individual photons. The sensor also uses gated photon detection, recording light only during specific time windows to reduce background noise and improve measurement accuracy.
Researchers tested the prototype using light levels ranging from several hundred photons down to just five photons. They also successfully detected electrons generated by a strontium-90 source inside a plastic scintillator.
Laboratory measurements closely matched computer simulations, providing confidence in the detector’s performance and validating plans for the next-generation system.
The upgraded version will feature a new SPAD sensor with higher photon detection efficiency and sub-nanosecond timing. Instead of grouping photons into fixed time windows, each detected photon will receive its own precise timestamp, improving the accuracy of particle-track reconstruction.
Researchers have also optimized the optical system to collect more light and expand the camera’s field of view, further enhancing spatial resolution.
Artificial intelligence plays a central role in PLATON’s data analysis. The research team developed a neural network based on a Transformer architecture similar to those used in large language models. Rather than processing text, the AI analyzes patterns in the detected photons, identifying correlations in their positions and arrival times to reconstruct the original particle interactions.
Simulations indicate that an upgraded PLATON detector measuring 10 centimeters on each side could achieve spatial resolution better than one millimeter while efficiently identifying neutrino interactions.
The team also modeled a detector with a volume of one cubic meter. Simulations suggest it could achieve spatial resolution of just a few millimeters—comparable to today’s state-of-the-art plastic scintillator detectors—without requiring millions of individual detector elements.
Researchers believe further refinements could eventually enable sub-millimeter resolution even in detectors larger than one cubic meter.
Beyond particle physics, the technology could have significant medical applications. The ETH Zurich team has already filed three patents covering the use of PLATON technology in positron emission tomography (PET), including scanner design and AI-based image processing.
The researchers say the project continues a long tradition of particle physics innovations finding broader applications, citing the World Wide Web and proton therapy as examples of technologies that originated from fundamental physics research before transforming other fields. (ANI)
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