Physics Opportunities of Large Liquid Scintillator Detectors

Date: June 19-20, 2026
Venue: UC Irvine Campus

Charting the Path Beyond-Tonne-Scale and More Establishing sensitivity to neutrinoless double beta decay in the normal neutrino mass ordering is a defining goal for the coming decades. Organic liquid scintillator detectors offer a promising route to the large target masses and low backgrounds required, while enabling a rich additional physics program. Recent advances in detector technology, event reconstruction, and background discrimination motivate exploration of beyond tonne-scale sensitivity. At the same time, such detectors could also address DSNB, solar neutrinos, geo-neutrinos, and CP violation if deployed in a neutrino beam.

This town hall, held in conjunction with Neutrino 2026, will convene the community to discuss the physics case, technical requirements, and R&D directions for liquid scintillator–based 0νββ searches, with an emphasis on inclusive discussion and openness to novel concepts. This will be the first in a series of three town halls, with the goal of converging on a shared path forward.

This meeting will take place at The Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building at UC Irvine, in room 1010. Information on this venue can be found HERE.

Registration

Registration has two steps:

1. Please register for the meeting here

2. Please pay the registration fee using UCI touch net

(The registration fee uses the same system as Neutrino 2026. You can register at the same time, or independently. Attendance of this Town Hall does not require / depend on attendance of Nu26).

Meeting agenda and speakers

Friday, June 19th, 2026

Time	Agenda Item	Speaker
9:00 AM	Welcome, meeting goals	Gabriel Orebi Gann
Session: Physics Reach -- Chair: Ed Blucher
9:10 AM	0νββ & CPV in 2035 and beyond	Karsten Heeger
9:50 AM	Broader experimental landscape for neutrino mass	Thierry Lasserre
10:30 AM	Coffee Break
Session: Nuclear & Detector Requirements -- Chair: Vince Giuseppe
11:00 AM	Nuclear Modeling Challenges and Opportunities	Emanuele Mereghetti
11:30 AM	Detector Requirements for Mechanism Discrimination & Isotope Comparisons	Jason Detwiler
12:00 PM	NuDoubt++: Search for Double Beta Plus Decays	Veronika Palusova
12:15 PM	Cherenkov–scintillation separation for double beta decay	Michi Wurm
12:30 PM	Lunch
Session: 0νββ Reach -- Chair: Jason Newby
1:30 PM	Optimal Design & Practically Achievable Sensitivity to 0νββ for Loaded Scintillator	Steve Biller
2:00 PM	What ultimately limits next-generation 0νββ experiments?	Chair: Jason Newby; Panel: Michi Wurm, Chris Grant, Andrea Giuliani, Thomas Brunner, Steve Biller
3:00 PM	Coffee Break
Session: Beam Applications -- Chair: Alfons Weber
3:30 PM	Capabilities and Requirements for Large LS Detectors for beam physics	Laura Munteanu
4:00 PM	Hybrid Cherenkov+Scintillator Approaches in Beams	Alexandre Sousa
4:30 PM	Opportunities at the Sanford Underground Research Facility	Jaret Heise
4:45 PM	Study of target liquids for large scintillator detectors	Logan Lebanowski
5:00 PM	Close

Saturday, June 20th, 2026

Time	Agenda Item	Speaker
Session: Lessons Learned -- Chair: Karsten Heeger
9:00 AM	Lessons from KamLAND-Zen	Spencer Axani
9:25 AM	Lessons from SNO+	Josh Klein
9:50 AM	Ultra-Low Background Cleanliness Lessons from Borexino	Gioacchino Ranucci
10:15 AM	Scaling to JUNO	Liangjian Wen
10:40 AM	Coffee Break
Session: Astrophysics -- Chair: Mark Vagins
11:10 AM	Supernova, DSNB, and other astrophysical signals	Cecilia Lunardini
11:40 AM	Capabilities of and requirements for liquid scintillator detectors for supernova and astrophysical signals	Kate Scholberg
12:10 PM	Solar neutrinos in 2035	Wick Haxton
12:40 PM	Capabilities of and requirements for liquid scintillator detectors for solar neutrinos	Obada Nairat
13:10 PM	Lunch
Session: Antineutrinos -- Chair: Nigel Smith
2:10 PM	Geoneutrinos with liquid scintillator: prospects and requirements	Livia Ludhova
2:40 PM	Unveiling the Earth’s mantle with directional geo-neutrino measurements	Michael Leyton
2:55 PM	A New Method for Evaluating the Angular Sensitivity of Antineutrino Detectors	Max Asa Albert Dornfest
3:10 PM	Coffee Break
Session: Closing -- Chair: Michi Wurm
3:30 PM	Optimizing detector design for a broad physics program	Chair: Michi Wurm; Panel: Nigel Smith, Eunil Won, Ray Bunker, Hiro Tanaka, Ed Blucher
4:30 PM	Closing talk: International Programmatic Landscape	Hitoshi Murayama
5:00 PM	Close out	Gabriel Orebi Gann