The Dichroicon: A Spectral Photon Sorter

Many large scale particle detectors use photons as their primary event detection method, usually detecting numbers of photons and their arrival times. Photons also carry information about an event through their wavelength, polarization, and direction, but often little to none of this information is utilized. This talk aims to characterize the "dichroicon," a Winston-style light cone comprised of dichroic filters which allows detectors to use the wavelength information encoded in photons. The dichroicon has a broad range of applications including the discrimination between Cherenkov and scintillation light in scintillator detectors, the correction for photon dispersion in large scale detectors, and new handles on particle ID. This talk will present experimental results taken with CHESS, a benchtop scale particle detector located at Berkeley Lab. These results quantify the dichroicon's ability to separate scintillation light from Cherenkov light and explore how this affects event reconstruction. Additionally, simulation results illustrating the impact of dichroicons in next generation neutrino detectors will be discussed.