PhD Studentship on DUNE Neutrino Experiment

A studentship is available to work with Prof Simon J.M. Peeters on the development of the DUNE neutrino experiment and the study of neutrinos. DUNE is a next generation neutrino experiment planned to start running in the second half of the next decade. A beam of neutrinos will be sent 1,300 km from Fermilab near Chicago to the Stanford Underground Research Facility, in South Dakota. The far detector consists of four Time-Projection Chamber (TPC) modules, using 40 ktonnes of liquid argon as a neutrino target. This allows to measure the products of neutrino interactions in great detail. The primarily physics goal of the experiment is to understand if the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the Universe is due to CP violation in the neutrino sector. The detector is also able to observe a range of astrophysical neutrinos (e.g. from supernovae, the Sun, or dark matter annihilation). Projects in this area will be focussed on data acquisition, detector simulation, and low-energy neutrinos (as these will be the most challenging to detect). There will be the opportunity to become involved in testbeam activities, such as protoDUNE at CERN.