neutrino

Prototyping is an indispensable step in the development of particle physics experiments like DUNE and projects like PIP-II.

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.

From Bioengineer.org, March 21, 2023: Congratulations to Mary Bishai, distinguished scientist from Brookhaven National Laboratory, who has been elected co-spokesperson of the international project DUNE. Bishai began working on DUNE in 2012 and will lead DUNE’s 1,400-member international collaboration alongside Sergio Bertolucci, a physics professor at the University of Bologna.

From Scientific American, March 16, 2023: Big news about a smaller size: MINERvA researchers used a new and entirely independent method to measure a proton’s radius. The team’s measurement of the proton’s radius was 0.73 femtometer, even smaller than the 0.84-femtometer electric charge radius. In either case, it is almost 10,000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.

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 Physics World, March 6, 2023: The MINERvA experiment at Fermilab has been used to study the structure of the proton using neutrinos. Teijin Cai and colleagues working on Fermilab’s MINERvA experiment have showed how information about the proton can be extracted from neutrinos that have been scattered by the detector’s plastic target.

The quest to understand the small mass of neutrinos is also a quest to discover new particles.

Most astronomers trek to the mountaintops to study the stars, but a group of physicists are seeking the secrets of the cosmos with a detector at the bottom of the ocean.

From Science Daily, Feb. 1, 2023: Yesterday, Nature posted new research which used a beam of neutrinos for the first time to investigate the structure of protons. With Fermilab’s MINERvA detector, scientists were able to precisely measure the proton’s size and structure using neutrinos with data gathered from thousands of neutrino-hydrogen scattering events.