Short Baseline Neutrino Programme

Overview

The Short-Baseline Neutrino Program is situated at Fermilab and began as a joint proposal by three collaborations working at the site to use their detectors to conduct precise sensitive searches for the electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance in the Booster Neutrino Beam (Also known as MiniBooNE or BNB). These events were an indication of the presence of a sterile neutrino, a fourth flavour of neutrino that has never been confidently observed and therefore this collaboration is ultimately a search for a new particle. All three detectors operate using LArTPCs – liquid argon time projection chambers – which will be used in the DUNE experiment (Read more about LArTPCs on this page) and this collaboration is important in order to further develop this technology. Further information about the joint scientific goals are delineated in the proposal which is available here.

Site Map of the SBN programme

 

Short Baseline Neutrino Detector

The Short Baseline Neutrino Detector (SBND) will be one of three of the collaboration’s liquid argon detectors residing in the Booster Neutrino Beam(BNB) at Fermilab as part of the SBN programme. The other two detectors are MicroBooNE(see below), the intermediate detector, and ICARUS-T600, the far detector. SBND is a 112 ton active volume LArTPC(see above) which will be located very close to the BNB neutrino source (110 m away). The detector is expecting to begin operation in 2018 and is currently in the design stage.

A 3D image of what the short baseline neutrino detector

SBND will record over a million neutrino interactions per year, which will be the record for such events. Such a large number of high measurements of the un-oscillated neutrino(the neutrinos do not oscillate until they have travelled further) of the BNB means that the SBND programme is a vital component in performing searches for neutrino oscillations. The huge data sample will enable scientists to study interactions between neutrinos and argon at a high energy range (Gev) with unrivaled precision. These interactions are criticial to understand and further develop LArTPC technology for the DUNE project.

MicroBooNE

The MicroBooNE is the intermediate LArTPC detector along the BNB line and the 170 ton detector is currently operating, with the experiment first starting to collect neutrino data in October 2015. It will measure low energy neutrino cross sections and investigate the low energy excess events (which were indicators of a fourth sterile neutrino, read more on this page) observed in the MiniBooNE experiment. In addition to this the detector doubles as the next step towards the construction of massive kiloton scale LAr TPC detectors for the DUNE project and was the operating first detector in the SBN program.

One of the first neutrino event candidates seen at MicroBooNE
One of the first neutrino event candidates seen at MicroBooNE