| R. Chipaux, M. Cribier, C. Dujardin, N. Garnier, N. Guerassimova, J. Mallet, J.-P. Meyer, C. Pédrini, A.G. Petrosyan
|
The observed deficit of the solar neutrino flux
is now well established. This puzzling problem
of today's particle physics could be soon
understood. The most likely explanation would be
the vacuum neutrino oscillation phenomenon,
indirectly proving the non-zero mass of these
fleeting particles.
Following the proposition of R.S. Raghavan of
using (¨176)Yb as a target for low energy solar
neutrino spectroscopy, an intense R&D work has
started a few years ago to define a suitable
scintillator incorporating a large amount of
ytterbium. Recently, the observation of UV
scintillation in mixed yttrium/ytterbium
aluminium garnets opened the field of
investigation to a new class of scintillating
crystals with interesting luminescence
properties, very attractive not only for
neutrino physics but for radiation detection in
general. Their luminescence properties present
some peculiarities that make them interesting by
themselves.
|
