Neutrino Oscillation Study and Proton Decay Search with DUNE

DUNE is a large international project to design, construct and operate a multi-kiloton scale liquid argon detector for neutrino physics, astrophysics and proton decay search. The detector will be built deep underground at the SURF facility (South Dakota, USA). The PPPA group is involved in the DUNE project with one of the responsibilities to model background events produced by cosmic-ray muons and investigating the sensitivity of the experiment to different tasks. This PhD project includes Monte Carlo simulations of muons and muon-induced cascades for different detector designs, studying discrimination between signal and background events and evaluating detector sensitivity. The student will also be expected to contribute to the data analysis and calibration of SBND (Short-Baseline Near Detector) to be installed at Fermilab in 2018 with a goal to test some neutrino oscillation anomalies reported by several experiments and search for sterile neutrinos. Another potential task within this PhD project is the calibration and analysis of data from ProtoDUNE - the small prototype of DUNE to be built at CERN in 2017. There is an opprotunity to spend 6-12 months at Fermilab or at CERN working with the SBND or ProtoDUNE detectors. The candidate should have a good knowledge of particle physics and programming skills. The knowledge of nuclear physics and particle astrophysics is desirable.