Underground physics without underground labs: large detectors in solution-mined salt caverns

A number of current physics topics, including long-baseline neutrino physics, proton decay searches, and supernova neutrino searches, hope to someday construct huge (50 kiloton to megaton) particle detectors in shielded, underground sites. With today's practices, this requires the costly excavation and stabilization of large rooms in mines. In this paper, we propose utilizing the caverns created by the solution mining of salt. The challenge is that such caverns must be filled with pressurized fluid and do not admit human access. We sketch some possible methods of installing familiar detector technologies in a salt cavern under these constraints. Some of the detectors discussed are also suitable for deep-sea experiments, discussed briefly. These sketches appear challenging but feasible, and appear to force few major compromises on detector capabilities. This scheme offers avenues for enormous cost savings on future detector megaprojects.