Laza Rakotondravohitra was the first Malagasy grad student to conduct research in neutrino physics. He and others are working to ensure he will be far from the last.
LBNF/DUNE
The international LBNF/DUNE team with its partners recently tested the logistics of shipping and handling the large detector components that will make up the far-site detector of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. On Wednesday, Nov. 2, personnel at the Sanford Underground Research Facility successfully lowered a 25-foot-long detector component for DUNE a mile underground. This was a full-scale prototype assembled and tested in Europe, then shipped from CERN to South Dakota. DUNE will ship about 150 of these components to South Dakota to build the first neutrino detector module of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
From Physics Today: Snowmass 2022 this past July took place over 10 days with almost 1,200 people participating online and in person at the University of Washington. It involved 511 white papers spanning 10 “frontier” areas. This once-a-decade meeting also reaffirmed support for completing the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and the affiliated Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility to carry our DUNE’s science goals.
Excavation of the large caverns for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility is in full swing. Over a third of the whopping 800,000 tons that need to be extracted from a mile underground have been removed. When finished, the underground facility will cover an area about the size of eight soccer fields and provide space for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is an international experiment to unlock the mysteries of neutrinos. DUNE will be installed in the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, under construction in the United States. One mile underground, at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, the excavation of the large LBNF caverns for the DUNE far detectors is in full swing. When complete, the LBNF underground facility will cover an area about the size of eight soccer fields.
From Phys.org, August 3, 2022: Fermilab’s NOvA experiment reports analysis on oscillation data delivering some of the most accurate estimates to date describing neutrino oscillations and providing important hints on two important aspects of neutrino physics—the ordering of neutrino masses and the degree of charge-parity (CP) violation. These results set the stage for the next generation of “long-baseline” experiments, like Hyper-K and DUNE, which will dramatically boost our ability to probe elusive aspects of neutrino physics.
DOE Office of Science Director Asmeret Berhe toured the construction site of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility in Lead, South Dakota and met with members of the Fermilab South Dakota Services Division on July 6-7.
In mid-May, Fermilab welcomed LBNF/DUNE collaborators from Brazil for a four-day visit to observe the project’s cryogenics prototyping efforts and other liquid argon detectors and research facilities at the lab.
From Physics Today, July 2022: Anne Heavey, senior technical editor at Fermilab describes how teams from around the world are developing and constructing detector components for the world’s largest cryogenic particle detector, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).
Lia Merminga, an internationally renowned physicist and scientific leader, has been appointed to lead the U.S.’ premier particle physics and accelerator lab, effective April 18. Merminga will be the seventh director of Fermilab and the first woman to serve in the role.