About Home Events Giving REU Nevis in the News Contact us Basics What we do Students and visitors What is physics? Physics for you Research Overview ATLAS MicroBooNE VERITAS Heavy ion Astrophysics RARAF Info Phone Book Directions Events Meeting rooms NSF Review Services Webmail Wiki Viewcal (need login) Room reservations DocDB A/V (for tech setup)

MicroBooNE

MicroBooNE is a neutrino experiment at Fermilab which will investigate neutrino properties and interactions using the booster neutrino beam. It is a follow-up experiment to the MiniBooNE experiment which also ran in the Fermilab booster neutrino beam. MiniBooNE observed an enhanced number of low energy events over expectation with characteristics that imply the events have outgoing electrons or photons. Since electron neutrinos produce electrons in their charged current interactions, one interpretation is that these extra events are due to more electron neutrino interactions than expectation. An alternative explanation is that they are due to an unexpected number of neutrino events producing photons in the final state. In either case, the anomalous MiniBooNE signal may be from some type of new physics either within or beyond the current particle physics model.

MicroBooNE will have the capability to distinguish between electrons and photons by using a time projection chamber (TPC) filled with 175 tons of liquid argon. This detector will have excellent spatial and energy resolution and will be able to differentiate between an electron from an electron neutrino interaction and a photon; an electron will produce a track originating at the main interaction vertex, while a photon which will travel some distance from the vertex before converting and producing a track. Its superb pattern recognition capabilities will also allow improved measurements of several neutrino cross sections. MicroBooNE will also be a test setup for future very large (~100 kton) liquid argon detectors planned for studies of CP violation in neutrino interactions, proton decay and Super Novae detection. It will allow R&D on liquid argon purity, mechanical configurations and electronic designs.

The Columbia neutrino group at Nevis Labs have been involved in the design and construction of the readout electronics for the liquid argon detector and the phototubes that detect the scintillation light from the liquid argon. The group will also be involved in coding a simulation program for neutrino interactions in liquid argon and in developing pattern recognition analysis procedures to distinguish between neutrino interactions and background events and between electrons and photons.