DUNE

The Department of Energy has formally approved the start of full construction for the PIP-II project, an upgrade to the Fermilab accelerator complex that includes a new linear accelerator. PIP-II is an essential enhancement that will power the world’s most intense high-energy neutrino beam. It is the first particle accelerator built in the United States with significant contributions from international partners.

The two institutions have signed an agreement to collaborate on research in support of one of the largest particle physics experiments in the world: DUNE, hosted by Fermilab.

From Innovation News Network, February 25, 2022: PIP-II project director Lia Merminga discusses the Fermilab accelerator complex upgrade being done in collaboration with research institutions in India, the UK, Italy, France, and Poland. Read more about the current status of PIP-II project, what it sets out to achieve and the impacts PIP-II will have on the future of particle physics research.

From The Conversation, December 21, 2021: Aaron McGowan, Principal Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology explores research in 2021 in which physicists around the world ran a number of experiments that probed the Standard Model. From Higgs Boson, to Muon g-2 and the restart of the LHC at CERN, McGowan highlights some of the ways the Standard Model fails to explain every mystery of the universe.

Researchers from more than 50 countries collaborate with Fermilab to develop state-of-the-art technologies and solve the mysteries of matter, energy, space and time. Take a look at 10 ways Fermilab and its partners advanced science and technology in 2021.

The Secretary of Energy toured America’s premier particle physics and accelerator laboratory and discussed cutting-edge research on neutrinos, accelerators, quantum information science and more.

As part of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, a UK-US collaboration is preparing for industrial scale production of large particle detector components. This fall, it’s taking the first ones for a final test-drive.

From Rapid City Journal-Our Northern Hills, November 4, 2021: Excavation crews at the underground site of DUNE reached an important milestone. They completed the careful excavation of the ventilation shaft with just one drill bit during the entire four-and-a-half-month process. Crews also uncovered a 1-1/2 foot thick chunk of quartz crystal during the process that miraculously was not damaged by the reamer head, nor by the 300-foot fall it sustained, marking it a gem of the milestone.

In early October, crews completed the raise-bore drilling of the vertical ventilation shaft at the Lead, South Dakota, LBNF/DUNE project site and unexpectedly uncovered a geological treasure during the process.

From the Black Hills Pioneer, Sept. 2, 2021: Fermilab design manager for DUNE Joshua Willhet takes readers 4,850 feet underground to view and describe the excavation of the tunnels that will make way to the caverns of the LBNF for DUNE.