This CAREER award funded the design, fabrication, data taking, and data analysis of the ArgoNeuT Experiment, which stands for Argon Neutrino Test.  This test experiment was designed to perform Research and Development of a new kind of precision detector to study neutrinos, a small particle in the electron family. 

The detector, called a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) uses Liquid Argon as the target with which neutrinos interact.  Once the neutrinos interact they produce charged particles including muons, electrons and protons.  These charged particles knock electrons off of the Argon atoms.  These electrons are then drifted from the main volume of Argon to the edge of the detector where they pass through wires and are readout.  The readout electrons then produce a computer, photo-like, image of the neutrino interaction.  A candidate neutrino interaction is shown in the attached photo.  Unlike conventional neutrino detectors which tend to record the neutrino interaction rather coarsely, these  LArTPCs record very precise information on the neutrino interaction.  As a result, using these detectors allows for precision experiments with very low backgrounds. 

Neutrino detectors for next generation searches for CP violation will look for differences between neutrinos and anti-neutrinos.  Given how these experiments are performed, the detectors will need to be very large – 10s of kilotons of Liquid Argon.  ArgoNeuT was designed to help us begin to learn how to build these very large detectors.  As a first step in this process in the US, ArgoNeuT was quite small with an inner detector 50 x 50 x 100cm  rectangle. 

The inner detector, the cryostat, and the readout were funded through this CAREER grant.  The attached image shows a schematic of the detector.  The detector was designed and fabricated in 2008, commissioned in 2009 at Fermilab National Laboratory, and installed in a neutrino beam at Fermilab in 2010 where it took data for 6 months before being removed from the neutrino beam.  From 2011 to the completion of this grant, the ArgoNeuT collaboration including students and post-docs partially funded by this grant, have been working to analyze the data and measure neutrino interactions in the detector volume.  A first physics paper in the premier physics journal, Physical Review Letters, has already been published.  Five other physics analyses are underway which we anticipate will also lead to publication in peer reviewed journals.  The first paper is the first every published physics cross section result using these detectors. 

The Broader Impacts component of this award funded a Saturday program for 6^th-8^th grade girls named “Girls Science Investigations”.   This program, run in the lab rooms at Yale University, was designed to be an hands-on interactive lab program to encourage middle school girls to enjoy and pursue science.  Over the last 5 years, the program has hosted approximately 100 girls per Saturday session for four Saturdays a year.  Activities include making radios, cloud chambers, robots, and studying concepts across physics.  The volunteers who teach the girls include Yale female undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty and retired science teachers.  Many of the participants after they “graduate” from the program, continue on as volunteers for the next set of participants.  The program has been a huge success.  We use evaluations from the girls to help tailor the curricula for the next set of programs. 

Last Modified: 08/02/2012
Modified by: Bonnie Fleming