The development of slow Water-based Liquid Scintillators for next-generation neutrino experiments

The development and production of Water-based Liquid Scintillators (WbLS) offers the potential to revolutionize next-generation neutrino experiments. This novel detection media, containing both water and organic constituents, produces a combination of scintillation and Cherenkov light, with the utilisation of both components expanding the physics potential of large-scale experiments. It will further enhance mass hierarchy and CP violation determination capabilities, whilst assisting searches for the diffuse supernova neutrino background, nucleon decay and neutrinoless double beta decay. A challenge of using this neoteric media is the separation of the two light components. To facilitate this, an exciting evolution would be to produce Water-based Slow Scintillators (WbSS) that fluoresce on longer timescales. The difficulties of this are wide and varied: Which amalgamation is optimal? What are the ideal characteristics for neutrino experiments? How can we fully parameterise and understand the new media? In this talk, the synthesis, modelling, measurement and current status of these innovative cocktails will be presented.