| NSF Org: |
PHY Division Of Physics |
| Recipient: |
|
| Initial Amendment Date: | July 22, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 10, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 1505313 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
James Shank
jshank@nsf.gov (703)292-4516 PHY Division Of Physics MPS Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $629,937.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $629,937.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2017 = $167,483.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
|
| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
615 W 131ST ST NEW YORK NY US 10027-7922 (212)854-6851 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
| Primary Place of Performance: |
136 S. Broadway Irvington NY US 10533-0137 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
| Parent UEI: |
|
| NSF Program(s): | HEP-High Energy Physics |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
|
| Program Element Code(s): |
|
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.049 |
ABSTRACT
One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model has succeeded in classifying all of the elementary particles known into a hierarchy of groups having similar quantum properties. The validity of this model to date has been recently confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. However, the Standard Model as it currently exists leaves open many questions, for example why there is a preponderance of matter over antimatter in the universe. One of the primary areas to search for answers to such open questions about the universe is to focus on a study of the properties of neutrinos and to use what we know and can learn about neutrinos as probes of science beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinos are elementary particles that barely interact with anything else in the universe. They have no electric charge and were once thought to be massless. Moreover, the Standard Model predicted that there were actually three different kinds of neutrinos that were distinguishable through the different interactions that they would undergo whenever they would interact with matter. But recent measurements have totally changed our picture of neutrinos. We now know that neutrinos do have a mass and because they do, they can actually change from one type to another. Detailed measurements of these changes, along with other current neutrino measurements, form one of the most promising ways to probe for new physics beyond the Standard Model. There have also been possible hints in various experiments of new types of neutrinos (called sterile neutrinos), and building the critical instruments to clarify such "hints" is one of the main thrusts of the work in this project.
The work proposed here is to develop the front-end electronics for a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr TPC) for the Liquid Argon, Near Detector (LAr1-ND) Experiment. This detector technique is powerful in that it allows the experimenter to distinguish between electrons and photons, important for the understanding of the character of neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillations. At Fermilab, the LAr1-ND experiment, along with a companion experiment called MicroBooNE, should significantly increase the physics reach toward answering the important question of whether hypothesized "sterile" neutrinos exist and resolving the anomalies in recent neutrino experiments. The electronics developed through this award will also advance an important new technology for the field, the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber, which is the likely technology in the future large-scale Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) being constructed at FNAL.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
Note:
When clicking on a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number, you will be taken to an external
site maintained by the publisher. Some full text articles may not yet be available without a
charge during the embargo (administrative interval).
Some links on this page may take you to non-federal websites. Their policies may differ from
this site.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The major goal of this project was to design and construct the TPC readout warm electronics system for the SBND experiment at Fermilab. The SBND experiment is part of the Fermilab short-baseline neutrino oscillation (SBN) program, which will eventually include three liquid-argon TPC (LArTPC) detectors: SBND as a near detector, MicroBooNE as a middle detector, and ICARUS as a far detector. MicroBooNE, with an active mass of 87 tons of liquid argon and located at 470 m from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) target, has been taking beam data since October 2015, and has recently completed its planned neutrino beam running. ICARUS, with an active mass of 476 tons and at 600 m from the target, has begun operations in 2021, and SBND, with an active mass of 112 tons and at 110 m from the target will begin operations by early 2023. The combination of the three experiments will give high sensitivity to the search for neutrino oscillations at the mass-squared difference region around 1 eV2, where a number of anomalous results have been reported.
The TPC readout warm electronics for the SBND experiment, designed and constructed at Columbia University?s Nevis Laboratories, builds on the group?s leading contributions and expertise with LArTPC readout electronics for the MicroBooNE experiment, which recently completed its successful operations. The group, led by PI?s Georgia Karagiorgi and Michael Shaevitz, includes post-docs Jose Crespo-Anadon and Daisy Kalra and PhD students Davio Cianci, Kathryn Sutton, Guanqun Ge, and Bridge to PhD student Iris Ponce. The group took on the responsibility and leadership for construction, testing, installing, and commissioning of SBND?s TPC readout warm electronics system, and completed this work successfully in July 2021. More than half of our students and post-docs who have participated in this project have moved on to post-doctoral and faculty positions, and the remaining team members (Daisy Kalra and Guanqun Ge) are now serving as the lead readout experts and data acquisition experts for the SBND experiment.
The Nevis-designed TPC readout warm electronics system has impacted the design for the future Fermilab DUNE oscillation experiment Far Detector including the readout and data acquisition systems. It has particularly inspired and enabled data selection and trigger development for continuously operation and readout of the DUNE LArTPC detectors. These R&D efforts are now being led by Karagiorgi and Kalra, with the goal of operating SBND in TPC-based self-triggering mode after it begins operations, which is projected to be around the start of 2023.
Last Modified: 11/15/2021
Modified by: Michael H Shaevitz
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
