DUNE

To build the DUNE neutrino experiment and its associated accelerator upgrade, experts invent customized ways to transport fragile, expensive and highly specialized components.

From the State University of Campinas, Unicamp (Brazil), March 13, 2023: This week Lia Merminga visited the State University of Campinas in São Paulo to attend a workshop on the purification of liquid argon. The event celebrated the achievements of the first phase of the LBNF/DUNE project and previewed the work to be carried out and the technologies to be developed in the next stage. Merminga stated the efforts of undergraduate and graduate students and the contributions of the university are essential to the success of DUNE.

From BBC Sky at Night Magazine, March 13, 2023: BBC speaks with Dr. Elena Gramellini, a Lederman Fellow at Fermilab, whose field of research is experimental particle physics and neutrino detectors. Dr. Gramellini explains neutrinos, cosmic building blocks and what they can tell us about the early Universe.

From Laser Focus World, Jan. 12, 2023: What does the future of detectors look like and what problems will they solve? Advances in novel detectors are working on some of the most elusive mysteries in science—from quantum teleportation to neutrinos and dark matter. The long-baseline neutrino detectors of DUNE are part of this line up of international detectors.

A mile underground in South Dakota, construction crews have worked diligently to carve out an extensive network of caverns and tunnels that one day will house a huge neutrino experiment. Their efforts have paid off: With almost 400,000 tons of rock extracted from the earth, the excavation has reached the halfway point.

From the Rapid City Journal, Jan. 12, 2023: An interview with Fermilab project manager Joshua Willhite on the excavation of the caverns for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) being built under the Black Hills of South Dakota at SURF. Willhite is a mechanical engineering graduate of the South Dakota Mines university who spoke with him about his love of engineering and how the program at SD Mines led to his work on DUNE. This article is an adaptation of the South Dakota Mines story that published on Jan. 10.

From Virginia Tech, Jan. 4, 2023: Learn more about what researchers from the Virginia Tech Center for Neutrino Physics are contributing to the international DUNE collaboration. The Center is well-known for combining experimental and theoretical physics to study neutrinos as they bump into the argon inside the DUNE detector and leave behind trails of energy.

From the Innovation News Network, Dec. 9, 2022: Learn more about the capabilities of the anode plane assemblies for DUNE’s far detector and the UK’s contributions to the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment in an interview with Justin Evans from the University of Manchester.

Traveling by rail, sea, interstates and shafts, the first components of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment have arrived at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, South Dakota.

A new 20,000-pound particle detection system built for a neutrino experiment will be transported 3 miles across the Fermilab campus today. About the size of a small house, it will be the heart of the Short-Baseline Near Detector at Fermilab.