The Main Injector accelerator at Fermilab produces the world’s highest-intensity neutrino beam. Scientists plan to send the beam to the proposed DUSEL laboratory in South Dakota

This is an aerial photograph of the far detector location, the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, South Dakota.

 

 

What is LBNE?

The proposed Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment project will use a man-made, high-intensity muon neutrino beam, produced by the Main Injector accelerator at Fermilab.  The neutrino beam will travel through the earth toward particle detectors located in an underground laboratory more than 1000 kilometers from Fermilab.  The LBNE project is currently in a conceptual design phase.  Construction, if approved would occur around 2015.  Fermilab is the location of the LBNE project team that is developing the project.

How does the Mechanical Department plan on supporting LBNE?

The PPD Mechanical department is working on a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) that would be one of the far detectors.  The detector would be the largest underground storage tank of liquid argon in the world.  Deep underground in South Dakota, a 20 m x 20 m x 100 m cavern would be carved out of the rock and lined with a vessel to contain five million gallons (25 kTons) of liquid argon.  Wire chambers hang in the liquid and generate signals that describe the characteristics of arriving neutrinos.  The MD has been involved in the area of LArTPC experiments for the last decade, operating a R&D facitlity at the proton assembly building and working on the MicroBooNE experiment, ArgoNeuT experiment, and Liquid Argon Purity Demonstration cryostat.

For more information: LBNE website