The magic of pure argon

Deep inside a converted gold mine in South Dakota, researchers are tackling a colossal engineering challenge — building massive, super-cooled containers to hold liquid argon for a flagship physics experiment hosted by Fermilab for the international DUNE collaboration.

The experiment demonstrated the power of liquid-argon time projection chamber technology for neutrino research, and to date, the collaboration has published more than 80 scientific papers, helping lay the foundation for Fermilab’s neutrino research program.

In its quest to understand why matter exists, the flagship neutrino experiment hosted by Fermilab is constructing an enormous next-generation liquid-argon-based detector a mile underground. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is building on the successes of previous liquid-argon experiments, promising measurements of unprecedented precision over a wide range of energies that will bring significant new insights into the nature of the universe.