LBNF/DUNE

From the Black Hills Pioneer, July 7, 2023: Over 2,000 people in Lead, South Dakota celebrated Neutrino Day on July 8, organized by the Sanford Underground Research Facility with LBNF and DUNE members participating. The event featured a science comedian, interactive science booths, virtual underground tours as well as speakers on renewable energy and the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility for DUNE.

More than 70% of the excavation of the South Dakota portion of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is complete. Preparations for turning the huge caverns into usable laboratory space are underway.

From the Black Hills Pioneer, May 13, 2023: Last week representatives from Fermilab and officials from SURF hosted a community meeting for Lead, SD residents. The event was an opportunity to update attendees on the progress of the underground facility, answer questions and explain the next phase of the project once excavation is completed in 2024.

Scientists working on the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment are developing a vertical drift detector. The new technology may open doors to building large neutrino detectors at a lower cost and in a simpler manner.

The international DUNE collaboration is conducting final tests of the components for its first neutrino detector module, to be installed a mile underground in South Dakota. Preparations for ramping up the mass production of these components are underway.

Bishai and Bertolucci lead the 1,400-member collaboration of scientists and engineers of the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab.

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.

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.

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.