ICARUS experiment

Last updated

ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic And Rare Underground Signals) is a physics experiment aimed at studying neutrinos. It was located at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) where it started operations in 2010. After completion of its operations there, it was refurbished at CERN for re-use at Fermilab, in the same neutrino beam as the MiniBooNE, MicroBooNE and Short Baseline Near Detector (SBND) experiments. [1] The ICARUS detector was then taken apart for transport and reassembled at Fermilab, where data collection is expected to begin in fall 2021.

The ICARUS program was initiated by Carlo Rubbia in 1977, who proposed a new type of neutrino detector. [2] These are called Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LAr-TPC), which should combine the advantages of bubble chambers and electronic detectors, evolving previous detectors. [3] They detect neutrinos through the reaction: [4]

(a neutrino combining with an atom of argon-40 to yield an atom of potassium-40 and an electron.)

In the course of the ICARUS program, such detectors of considerable capacity were proposed. After first runs at Pavia in 2001, the ICARUS T600 detector at Gran Sasso, filled with 760 tons of liquid argon, started operation in 2010. In order to study neutrino oscillations and various fundamental topics of modern physics, neutrinos of astronomic or solar sources, and CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) beam produced 730 km away by the Super Proton Synchrotron from CERN, have been detected.

The CNGS neutrinos are also studied by the OPERA experiment, therefore those experiments are also called CNGS1 (OPERA) and CNGS2 (ICARUS). [5]

The CNGS measurements also became important when the OPERA group announced in September and November 2011 that they had measured superluminal neutrinos (see faster-than-light neutrino anomaly ). Shortly afterwards, the ICARUS collaboration published a paper in which they argued that the energy distribution of the neutrinos is not compatible with superluminal particles. This conclusion was based on a theory of Cohen and Sheldon Glashow. [6] In March 2012, they published a direct neutrino velocity measurement based on seven neutrinos events. The result was in agreement with the speed of light and thus special relativity, and contradicts the OPERA result. [5] In August 2012, another neutrino velocity measurement based on 25 neutrino events was published with increased accuracy and statistics, again in agreement with the speed of light. [7] (See measurements of neutrino speed .)

The ICARUS detector moved to Fermilab in July 2017 for a new neutrino experiment. [8] [9] In February 2020, scientists at Fermilab began cooling down ICARUS and filling it with 760 tons of liquid argon. Scientists hope to take the first measurements with the refurbished ICARUS later in 2020. [10] In May 2021, Fermilab announced that ICARUS would begin data collection in the fall of 2021. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faster-than-light</span> Propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light

Faster-than-light travel and communication are the conjectural propagation of matter or information faster than the speed of light. The special theory of relativity implies that only particles with zero rest mass may travel at the speed of light, and that nothing may travel faster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fermilab</span> High-energy particle physics laboratory in Illinois, USA

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), a joint venture of the University of Chicago, and the Universities Research Association (URA); although in 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) opened bidding for a new contractor due to concerns about the FRA performance. Fermilab is a part of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.

The muon neutrino is an elementary particle which has the symbol
ν
μ and zero electric charge. Together with the muon it forms the second generation of leptons, hence the name muon neutrino. It was discovered in 1962 by Leon Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger. The discovery was rewarded with the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MINOS</span> Particle physics experiment

Main injector neutrino oscillation search (MINOS) was a particle physics experiment designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by a Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) experiment in 1998. Neutrinos produced by the NuMI beamline at Fermilab near Chicago are observed at two detectors, one very close to where the beam is produced, and another much larger detector 735 km away in northern Minnesota.

The Large Volume Detector (LVD) is a particle physics experiment situated in the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy and is operated by the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). It has been in operation since June 1992, and is a member of the Supernova Early Warning System. Among other work, the detector should be able to detect neutrinos from our galaxy and possibly nearby galaxies. The LVD uses 840 scintillator counters around a large tank of hydrocarbons. The detector can detect both charged current and neutral current interactions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso</span> Physics laboratory in Assergi, Italy

Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the largest underground research center in the world. Situated below Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, it is well known for particle physics research by the INFN. In addition to a surface portion of the laboratory, there are extensive underground facilities beneath the mountain. The nearest towns are L'Aquila and Teramo. The facility is located about 120 km from Rome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NOvA</span> Observatory

The NOνA experiment is a particle physics experiment designed to detect neutrinos in Fermilab's NuMI beam. Intended to be the successor to MINOS, NOνA consists of two detectors, one at Fermilab, and one in northern Minnesota. Neutrinos from NuMI pass through 810 km of Earth to reach the far detector. NOνA's main goal is to observe the oscillation of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos. The primary physics goals of NOvA are:

The timeline of particle physics lists the sequence of particle physics theories and discoveries in chronological order. The most modern developments follow the scientific development of the discipline of particle physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nigel Lockyer</span> Particle physicist, Fermilab director

Nigel Stuart Lockyer is a British-American experimental particle physicist. He was the Director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), in Batavia, Illinois, the leading particle physics laboratory in the United States, from September 2013 to April 2022.

The Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) was an instrument used in a scientific experiment for detecting tau neutrinos from muon neutrino oscillations. The experiment is a collaboration between CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) in Gran Sasso, Italy and uses the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) neutrino beam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Borexino</span> Neutrino physics experiment in Italy

Borexino is a particle physics experiment to study low energy (sub-MeV) solar neutrinos. The detector is the world's most radio-pure liquid scintillator calorimeter. The scintillator is pseudocumene and PPO which is held in place by a thin nylon sphere. It is placed within a stainless steel sphere which holds the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) used as signal detectors and is shielded by a water tank to protect it against external radiation. Outward pointing PMT's look for any outward facing light flashes to tag incoming cosmic muons that manage to penetrate the overburden of the mountain above. Neutrino energy can be determined through the number of photoelectrons measured in the PMT's. While the position can be determined by extrapolating the difference in arrival times of photons at PMT's throughout the chamber.

The DarkSide collaboration is an international affiliation of universities and labs seeking to directly detect dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). The collaboration is planning, building and operating a series of liquid argon time projection chambers (TPCs) that are employed at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Assergi, Italy. The detectors are filled with liquid argon from underground sources in order to exclude the radioactive isotope 39
Ar, which makes up one in every 1015 (quadrillion) atoms in atmospheric argon. The Darkside-10 (DS-10) prototype was tested in 2012, and the Darkside-50 (DS-50) experiment has been operating since 2013. Darkside-20k (DS-20k) with 20 tonnes of liquid argon is being planned as of 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonio Ereditato</span> Italian physicist

Antonio Ereditato is an Italian physicist, currently associate researcher at Fermilab, Batavia, USA, and Emeritus professor at the University of Bern, Switzerland, where he has been Director of the Laboratory for High Energy Physics from 2006 to 2020. From 2021 to 2022 he has been Visiting Professor at the Yale University, USA. He carried out research activities in the field of experimental neutrino physics, of weak interactions and strong interactions with experiments conducted at CERN, in Japan, at Fermilab in United States and at the LNGS in Italy. Ereditato has accomplished several R&D studies on particle detectors: wire chambers, calorimeters, time projection chambers, nuclear emulsions, detectors for medical applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso</span>

The CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) project was a physics project of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The aim of the project was to analyse the hypothesis of neutrino oscillation by directing a beam of neutrinos from CERN's facilities to the detector of the OPERA experiment at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS), located in the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. The CNGS facility was housed in a tunnel which diverged from one of the SPS–LHC transfer tunnels, at the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It used the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator as a source of high-energy protons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly</span> 2011 experiment which mistakenly seemed to show faster-than-light travel

In 2011, the OPERA experiment mistakenly observed neutrinos appearing to travel faster than light. Even before the source of the error was discovered, the result was considered anomalous because speeds higher than that of light in vacuum are generally thought to violate special relativity, a cornerstone of the modern understanding of physics for over a century.

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a neutrino experiment under construction, with a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility that will observe neutrinos produced at Fermilab. An intense beam of trillions of neutrinos from the production facility at Fermilab will be sent over a distance of 1,300 kilometers (810 mi) with the goal of understanding the role of neutrinos in the universe. More than 1,000 collaborators work on the project. The experiment is designed for a 20-year period of data collection.

Measurements of neutrino speed have been conducted as tests of special relativity and for the determination of the mass of neutrinos. Astronomical searches investigate whether light and neutrinos emitted simultaneously from a distant source are arriving simultaneously on Earth. Terrestrial searches include time of flight measurements using synchronized clocks, and direct comparison of neutrino speed with the speed of other particles.

MicroBooNE is a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. It is located in the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) beamline where neutrinos are produced by colliding protons from Fermilab's booster-accelerator on a beryllium target; this produces many short-lived particles that decay into neutrinos. The neutrinos pass through solid ground, through another experiment called ANNIE, then solid ground, then through the Short Baseline Near Detector, then ground again before it arrives at the MicroBooNE detector 470 meters downrange from the target. After MicroBooNE the neutrinos continue to the MiniBooNE detector and to the ICARUS detector. MicroBooNE is also exposed to the neutrino beam from the Main Injector (NuMI) which enter the detector at a different angle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David B. Cline</span> American particle physicist

]

An accelerator neutrino is a human-generated neutrino or antineutrino obtained using particle accelerators, in which beam of protons is accelerated and collided with a fixed target, producing mesons which then decay into neutrinos. Depending on the energy of the accelerated protons and whether mesons decay in flight or at rest it is possible to generate neutrinos of a different flavour, energy and angular distribution. Accelerator neutrinos are used to study neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillations taking advantage of high intensity of neutrino beams, as well as a possibility to control and understand their type and kinematic properties to a much greater extent than for neutrinos from other sources.

References

  1. ↑ Jepsen, Kathryn (22 April 2015). "Italian neutrino experiment to move to the US". Symmetry Magazine. Retrieved 2015-05-08.
  2. ↑ Rubbia, C. (16 May 1977). "The liquid-Argon time projection chamber: a new concept for neutrino detector" (PDF). CERN. CERN-EP/77-08.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. ↑ Cerri, Claudio; Sergiampietri, Franco (March 1977). "Test of a liquid argon calorimeter with very thin sampling". Nuclear Instruments and Methods. 141 (2): 207–218. Bibcode:1977NucIM.141..207C. doi:10.1016/0029-554X(77)90769-8.
  4. ↑ ICARUS-Collaboration (2011). "Underground operation of the ICARUS T600 LAr-TPC: first results". Journal of Instrumentation. 6 (7): 7011. arXiv: 1106.0975 . Bibcode:2011JInst...6.7011R. doi:10.1088/1748-0221/6/07/P07011. S2CID   53398494.
  5. 1 2 ICARUS Collaboration (2012). "Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the ICARUS detector at the CNGS beam". Physics Letters B. 713 (1): 17–22. arXiv: 1203.3433 . Bibcode:2012PhLB..713...17A. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.05.033. S2CID   55397067.
  6. ↑ ICARUS Collaboration (2012). "A search for the analogue to Cherenkov radiation by high energy neutrinos at superluminal speeds in ICARUS". Physics Letters B. 711 (3–4): 270–275. arXiv: 1110.3763 . Bibcode:2012PhLB..711..270I. doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2012.04.014. S2CID   118357662.
  7. ↑ ICARUS collaboration (2012). "Precision measurement of the neutrino velocity with the ICARUS detector in the CNGS beam". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2012 (11): 49. arXiv: 1208.2629 . Bibcode:2012JHEP...11..049A. doi:10.1007/JHEP11(2012)049. S2CID   51160473.
  8. ↑ "Fermilab | Newsroom | Press Releases | April 22, 2015: ICARUS neutrino experiment to move to Fermilab". www.fnal.gov. Retrieved 2015-08-11.
  9. ↑ "ICARUS arrives at Fermilab | News". news.fnal.gov.
  10. ↑ Steffel, Catherine N. (March 2, 2020). "ICARUS prepares to chase a fourth neutrino". symmetrymagazine.org. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
  11. ↑ Barbu, Brianna. "ICARUS gets ready to fly". Fermilab. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.