scintillation
sin-tih-LAY-shun
Definition
A brief flash of light produced in a transparent material when it is struck by a high-energy charged particle or radiation.
Etymology
Derived from the Latin 'scintillare,' meaning to sparkle or emit sparks, the term entered English in the 17th century to describe the twinkling of stars or the emission of light flashes.
In the news
In this article, scintillation signals are the primary way the detector identifies particle interactions, specifically the S1 light flash produced when a particle strikes liquid xenon.
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment beneath South Dakota found one particle interaction in 220 live days that researchers have struggled to explain using known background processes—not a dark-matter discovery, but, as physicist Eric Dahl put it, the most interestin
Read the full article ↗ScienceBlog.com