From FNAL: “Gaining support for new long-baseline neutrino experiment at Fermilab”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014
Rob Roser

Jim Strait, project director for Fermilab’s proposed long-baseline neutrino experiment, answers a question at the Dec. 12 meeting to form a new collaboration at Fermilab. Photo: Reidar Hahn

On Dec. 5 and 12, many of the world’s neutrino scientists gathered at CERN and Fermilab, respectively, to learn about the newly proposed next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. These meetings were established to discuss a new letter of intent (LOI) for the experiment.

More than 150 people attended the collaboration-forming meeting at Fermilab on Dec. 12. Photo: Reidar Hahn

The LOI, which is currently signed by more than 350 scientists from more than 100 institutions around the world, leverages the Fermilab neutrino facility to undertake an experiment at Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota.

Sanford

The two meetings were designed to be identical in content. Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer kicked off both meetings with a historical overview as well as a high-level plan forward. Jim Strait, project director for the proposed long-baseline neutrino experiment, discussed the Fermilab facility and what is being offered. ICFA Neutrino Panel Chair Ken Long and I presented the LOI in our role to bring the world’s long-baseline neutrino community together, and Fermilab Deputy Director Joe Lykken summarized the current discussions on the international governance process. Lively panel discussions followed, giving attendees a chance to interact with the LOI authors and learn more about the proposal. Copies of the talks are online.

People can find the current draft of the LOI and sign it from the website. The deadline to sign it prior to its presentation to the PAC[?] is Jan. 11, 2015.

The next step in the formation of this new international collaboration is its first meeting, to be held at Fermilab from Jan. 22-23. It is open to anyone who is interested in joining this new scientific endeavor. Sergio Bertolucci, CERN director of research and the interim Institutional Board chair for the collaboration, has called the meeting and will announce the agenda in the coming weeks.

See the full article here.

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Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

Frm Fermilab: “LBNE collaboration expands to more than 500 members”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014
Maury Goodman, LBNE deputy spokesperson

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment, with more than 500 collaborators, is now the largest neutrino experiment collaboration in the world. In his opening address at last week’s collaboration meeting at Fermilab, LBNE co-spokesperson Robert Wilson reported that LBNE now counts 527 members from 90 institutions, including 139 from 35 institutions in eight non-U.S. countries. There were 159 registered participants at the July collaboration meeting, the largest attendance LBNE has enjoyed to date.

LBNE

Based on recommendations from the recent P5 report, a process to form a new fully internationalized collaboration to be called the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility has begun. During this transition, the collaboration will continue to operate and grow as LBNE to maintain continuity as the new organization evolves. Members of LBNE will make up a major part of LBNF.

“As the reformulation process takes place, we look forward to helping establish a project that fulfills the vision of a world-class neutrino experiment,” said Milind Diwan, LBNE co-spokesperson.

The growth of LBNE continues a many-year trend in high-energy physics toward fewer and larger experiments. As the scale and complexity of new projects continues to grow, larger numbers of scientists are needed to carry out the design of the experiment and the analysis of the data. Other large neutrino physics collaborations include T2K and IceCube, with recent author lists of 326 and 302, respectively. Daya Bay, Double Chooz, ICARUS, MicroBooNE, MiniBooNE, MINERvA, MINOS, NOνA and RENO each number between 40 and 200.

It is likely that more than 1,000 people will work on the new experiment, a prediction based on the growth of MINOS and NOvA from this point in their history, and particularly given the fact that many students and postdocs will join at a later stage, when physics data is likely to be collected. The largest collaborations in high-energy physics are the CERN experiments ATLAS and CMS, which currently have about 3,000 scientists each.

“The accelerator-based neutrino communities worldwide have been growing. They have convinced the larger particle physics community that a combined short- and long-baseline neutrino program is rich in physics and worth major investments,” Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer told the LBNE collaboration. “The Department of Energy and Fermilab are working together for success, and international funding agencies are at the table. This is an unparalleled opportunity to establish a united international collaboration for long-baseline neutrino physics based at Fermilab.”

See the full article here.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

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From Fermilab: “NOvA collaboration celebrates in northern Minnesota”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Leah Hesla

In 2012, upon beholding the newly completed NOvA far-detector building in northern Minnesota, the University of Minnesota’s Marvin Marshak didn’t believe the collaboration would be able to adequately populate it. At the time, the mammoth structure, which is the length of two basketball courts and would house the future NOvA detector, impressed visitors with the full force of not only its size, but its emptiness.

Fermilab NOvA Far detector

“It was scary. We looked at this building and thought, ‘Are we really going to be able to fill this place up?'” said Marshak, NOvA laboratory director. “People looked like tiny little insects against the backdrop of the building.”

His worries were needless. On Thursday, the NOvA collaboration celebrated the new detector, which now fills the building nicely, in Ash River, Minnesota.

The celebration came near the conclusion of NOvA’s collaboration meeting, which took place in Minneapolis. Attendees took a one-day excursion to the far detector, 280 miles north, to see the detector.

The collaboration also discussed the beginning of data taking with the full detectors in the next few weeks. A celebration at Fermilab is planned for later this year.

NOvA, a Fermilab-hosted neutrino experiment, makes use of two detectors: a smaller, underground detector at Fermilab and the much larger, 14-kiloton detector in Minnesota. The neutrino beam, originating at Fermilab through the NuMI beamline, travels 500 miles from the near detector through the Earth to the far detector.

NumI Tunnel

NOvA scientists will work to uncover the true mass ordering of neutrinos’ three types. They’ll also look for evidence of CP violation, which could help explain why there is so much more matter than antimatter in our universe and, thus, why we’re here.

“We’re going to kick all the physics analyses into high gear and get ready for first publications,” said Indiana University’s Mark Messier, NOvA co-spokesperson. “We hope to have first results by the end of the year.”

It’s been a long time coming. Researchers submitted a letter of intent to show their interest in a new neutrino experiment in 2002. In the years since, the collaboration has been hard at work designing, developing, producing and installing hardware, software, fiber optics and even the glue that would hold the kiloton-scale blocks’ components together.

With almost all of the modules of the detector already taking data, it’s a new era for NOvA and the Fermilab neutrino program.

“We’re excited to get this experiment up and running — we’ve been working toward this for a long time,” said Fermilab’s Pat Lukens, far detector manager.

“For at least the next 10 years, there are only two long-baseline neutrino beam experiments in the world — NOvA and T2K,” Marshak said, referring to the Japanese experiment. “Some of the answers we’re looking for are going to come from the experiments that we have right now.”

Fermilab LBNE

See the full article here.

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From Fermilab- “Frontier Science Result: MINERvA What happens in hydrocarbon stays in hydrocarbon (sometimes)”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Friday, Feb. 7, 2014
Carrie McGivern, University of Pittsburgh

When a neutrino enters the nucleus of an atom, it can interact with the protons and neutrons inside and impart enough energy to create completely new particles. Often a pion (a particle made of a quark and an antiquark) is produced. However, the nucleus is such a dense place that sometimes the pions never make it out of the atom!

Figuring out how many pions are produced and how many exit the nucleus is very important in the field of neutrino physics because it determines how well the energy of the incoming neutrino can be measured. Experiments such as LBNE will measure how neutrinos oscillate as a function of neutrino energy, but they will need to understand what those pions are doing in order to get the neutrino energies right.

Particle physicists have been measuring pions and constructing models of how they interact for a long time, but the neutrino interactions that produce these pions and what happens to them as they exit the nucleus is not nearly as well modeled. The interactions felt by the pions on their way out of the nucleus are called final-state interactions, and they are difficult to calculate because there are so many moving parts — all the protons and neutrons in the nucleus. We do have a few models, but it is important to verify them with experimental data from neutrino experiments. When the MiniBooNE measurement of pion production was first released, it was clear that the most complete models of what happens inside the nucleus were not describing the data. MINERvA now has a sample of several thousand events where a pion, proton and muon are produced when a neutrino interacts with a neutron or proton in the detector’s plastic scintillator, which is made of hydrocarbons (see top figure).

This shows what an event in the MINERvA detector looks like when a neutrino comes in from the left and interacts with a proton in the detector, creating a pion that goes backwards, in addition to a proton and a muon.

By studying the energy distribution of the pions that make it out of the nucleus, MINERvA can determine how big an effect the nucleus has on those pions. The better we understand (and then model) that effect, the better the whole field will be able to measure neutrino energies.

See the full article here.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

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From Fermilab: “LBNE prototype cryostat exceeds goals”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2014
Anne Heavey

“We’re cold, we’re full, and the purity numbers are a success.”

Barry Norris, the LBNE cryostat and cryogenic systems manager, thus summed up the just-completed first phase of testing for the 35-ton LBNE prototype cryostat.

PPD technician John Najdzion, standing atop the LBNE 35-ton prototype cryostat, works on the piping for the cryogenic systems. Photo: David Montanari, PPD

As reported in May 2013, the 35-ton cryostat was constructed to demonstrate that a non-evacuable “membrane” cryostat, the type chosen for the LBNE far detector, can satisfy the less-than-200-parts-per-trillion (ppt) requirement on oxygen contamination of the liquid argon in the detector and maintain that level stably.

On Dec. 20, during a marathon 36-hour session, PPD engineers David Montanari and Terry Tope cooled down the membrane cryostat — slowly and smoothly — to 110 Kelvin (-262 F), at which point they commenced the transfer of about 5,000 gallons liquid argon, maintained at about 89 K (-299 F), from the Liquid-Argon Purity Demonstrator to the 35-ton cryostat. (View a video of liquid argon in the cryostat.) By the end of this session, the team was able to verify that the systems for purifying, recirculating and recondensing the argon were working properly and to begin the purity testing.

“It is an excellent Christmas present,” said LBNE Co-spokesperson Milind Diwan of Brookhaven National Laboratory in congratulating the team. He recognized the accomplishment that the cryostat, the systems that function in and around it, and the connections to and from these systems satisfy the very stringent requirements on placed on them in regards to purity, leakage and electronic noise placed on them.

PPD scientist Alan Hahn ran the argon purity tests, in which he measured the lifetime of ionization electrons traveling through the argon, accelerated by an electric field. Purer argon has fewer contaminants present to intercept the electrons, therefore they can travel for longer times, on average. Hahn measured electron lifetimes to be between 2.5 and 3 milliseconds, nearly twice the goal of 1.5 milliseconds, corresponding to an oxygen contamination of only 100-120 ppt.

Following the success of this test, the cryogenics team, Tope and PPD Engineer Mark Adamowski will continue to tweak the knobs and levers for another two weeks, studying and improving the system in preparation for a second phase of testing. The Phase II testing program, scheduled to take place at the end of 2014, will focus on the performance of active detector elements placed directly in the volume of liquid argon.

“The 35-ton cryostat operation proves that very large liquid-argon detectors can be built using industry-standard liquefied natural gas technology,” said LBNE Far-Detector Project Manager Jim Stewart of Brookhaven National Laboratory. “This working prototype is a significant milestone toward clearing the way for the LBNE far detector as a next-generation neutrino detector.”

See the full article here.

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From Fermilab: “LBNE gains new partners from Brazil, Italy and UK”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013
Anne Heavey

LBNE is making headway toward becoming a truly global experiment.

Many new international partners officially joined LBNE during the collaboration meeting earlier this month. Photo courtesy of Norm Buchanan

Last week 16 institutions from Brazil, Italy and the UK joined the LBNE collaboration, based at Fermilab, significantly contributing to an overall membership increase of over 30 percent compared to a year ago.

The swelling numbers strengthen the case to pursue an LBNE design that will maximize its scientific impact, helping us understand how neutrinos fit into our understanding of matter, energy, space and time.

In mid-2012 an external review panel recommended phasing LBNE to meet DOE budget constraints. In December the project received CD-1 approval on its phase 1 design, which excluded both the near detector and an underground location for the far detector.

“Although LBNE was reconfigured for CD-1, our goal is still to deliver a full-scope, fully capable LBNE to enable world-leading physics,” Project Director Jim Strait told the LBNE collaboration earlier this month at its meeting in Fort Collins, Colo. “We have a well-developed design of such a facility, and we are working with new partners to move toward this goal.”

See the full article here.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

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From Symmetry: “Long-baseline neutrino experiment”

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment aims to discover whether neutrinos violate the fundamental matter–antimatter symmetry of physics.

February 13, 2013
Kurt Riesselmann

“The US Department of Energy has approved the conceptual design of a new experiment that will be a major test of our current understanding of neutrinos and their mysterious role in the universe. Scientists are now proceeding with the engineering design of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment, which aims to discover whether neutrinos violate the fundamental matter–antimatter symmetry of physics. If they do, physicists will be a step closer to answering the puzzling question of why the universe is filled with matter while antimatter all but disappeared after the big bang.

So far, quarks are the only known particles that violate this fundamental symmetry. But the observed effect in quark interactions is not of the right kind to explain the abundance of matter over antimatter in our universe.

Scientists know that neutrino interactions also could violate matter–antimatter symmetry. If so, how strong is the effect? Scientists designed the LBNE experiment to discover the answer. They plan to break ground in 2015.

From around the world

The LBNE experiment will send beams of neutrinos and antineutrinos from the Department of Energy’s Fermilab, 40 miles west of Chicago, to the Sanford Lab in the Black Hills of South Dakota. More than 350 scientists and engineers from more than 60 institutions have joined the LBNE collaboration so far. They come from universities and national laboratories in the United States, India, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. The collaboration continues to grow, and project leaders seek and anticipate further international participation.

Start on the prairie

Surrounded by 1000 acres of tallgrass prairie, the accelerators at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, will produce beams of muon neutrinos and antineutrinos for LBNE. Every 1.3 seconds, an accelerator will smash a batch of protons into a graphite target to make short-lived pions. Strong magnetic fields will guide and focus the pions to form a beam that points toward the LBNE detector in South Dakota. The pions will travel a few hundred feet, decay and produce muon neutrinos and antineutrinos.

A large particle detector to be built at the Sanford Lab will receive the neutrino and antineutrino beams. The lab is located at the former Homestake gold mine, the site of the Nobel Prize-winning Ray Davis solar neutrino experiment. The lab hosts several physics, biology, geology and engineering experiments, including investigations of neutrinos and dark matter. LBNE will be its largest experiment.”

See the full article here.

Symmetry is a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication.

From Fermilab: “DOE grants CD-1 approval to LBNE project”

Fermilab is an enduring source of strength for the US contribution to scientific research world wide.

Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012
Andre Salles

“One of Fermilab’s major future projects, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), achieved a significant milestone this week. The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday granted Critical Decision 1 approval to the first phase of LBNE, which includes construction of a beamline at Fermilab and a near-surface far detector at the Sanford Lab in Lead, S.D.

The neutrino beam for the proposed LBNE experiment would travel through 800 miles of earth to a far detector in Lead, S.D. Image: Fermilab

Plans for LBNE underwent three different reviews in the past two months before reaching the desk of William Brinkman, director of the Office of Science, who made the final decision to grant CD-1 approval.

The next planned milestone for the project will be initial construction for the beamline at Fermilab, slated to begin in 2015. CD-2 approval, the next stage of the DOE process, is expected in spring of 2016. The experiment is scheduled to begin taking data in 2023.”

See the full article here.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.

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From Fermilab Today: “LBNE builds 35-ton prototype cryostat”

Fermilab continues to be a great source of strength in the U.S. Basic Research Community.

Thursday, June 7, 2012
Anne Heavey

“The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment is moving ahead with its prototyping activities for a liquid-argon far detector.

Construction workers examine the concrete support for the 35-ton membrane cryostat for the LBNE project. Photo: Barry Norris

The LBNE far detector will require a cryostat to hold between 5,000 and 17,000 tons of liquid argon at 89 K – a significantly larger volume than any existing liquid-argon detector. The LBNE project team is currently constructing a 35-ton-capacity prototype cryostat at PPD’s PC-4 facility with the primary purpose of verifying that the high purity levels achieved last year in the Liquid Argon Purity Demonstrator, LAPD, are reproducible in a non-evacuated cryostat of the type planned for the LBNE detector.”

The LBNE Configuration at Fermilab

See the full article here.

From Symmetry/Breaking: “Physicists mobilize to rescue U.S. neutrino experiment”

Kathryn Grim
April 4, 2012

“Neutrino physicists in the U.S. have begun to regroup after a disappointing setback last week, when they learned the Department of Energy would not support the budget of a major proposed experiment.

The silver lining, as they see it, is that they have the chance to reevaluate their plans and find a path forward. DOE officials asked Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to study ways to make the costs of the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment more manageable, such as dividing its construction into stages or working with an existing neutrino beam.

LBNE collaboration members during a meeting at Fermilab.

‘On the one hand, we’re of course disappointed that we cannot do the whole experiment at once,’ said Pier Oddone, director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. ‘On the other hand, we’re encouraged. So long as we can get to the ultimate physics goals, we are happy.’

LBNE scientists hope to explore unanswered questions about neutrinos, some of the most abundant but least understood particles in the universe. Neutrinos have been surprising physicists since they were first discovered in 1956. Not only did they unexpectedly turn out to have mass, contrary to predictions from the Standard Model of particle physics; scientists also discovered that they mysteriously morph from one type to another mid-flight.

The LBNE collaboration includes more than 300 scientists and engineers from 51 institutions in the United States and 10 institutions in India, Italy, Japan and the UK. Current plans would place the larger of LBNE’s two neutrino detectors underground in Homestake Mine in South Dakota, now the Sanford Underground Research Facility, which is managed by the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”

Symmetrybreaking is a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication