One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model succeeded in classifying all of the elementary particles known at the time into a hierarchy of groups having similar quantum properties. The validity of this model to date was confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. However, the Standard Model as it currently exists leaves open many questions about the universe, including such fundamental questions as to why the Higgs mass has the value it has and why there is no antimatter in the universe. A primary area to search for answers to these and other open questions about the universe, how it came to be and why it is the way it is, is to focus on a study of the properties of neutrinos and to use what we know and can learn about neutrinos as probes of science beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinos are those elementary particles that interact with practically nothing else in the universe. They have no electric charge and were once thought to be massless. Like other elementary particles, they were believed to have an antimatter counterpart, the antineutrino. Moreover, the Standard Model predicted that there were actually three different kinds of neutrinos that were distinguishable through the different interactions that they did undergo whenever there was an interaction. But recent measurements have totally changed our picture of neutrinos. We now know that neutrinos do have a mass and because they do, they can actually change from one type to another. Detailed measurements of these changes, along with other current neutrino experiments, form one of the most promising ways to probe for new physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) and are the subject of this investigation. This research will involve the work of undergraduate students at Otterbein University, a RUI.
This award will support the neutrino physics group at Otterbein University to work on two experiments, MicroBooNE and DUNE, both of which use large-scale liquid Argon time-projection chamber (TPC) technology. The DUNE experiment will send a high-intensity broad-band neutrino beam from Fermilab to a liquid argon TPC in the Homestake mine in South Dakota. DUNE will make precise measurements of neutrino oscillations and support an extensive astrophysics program. On MicroBooNE, the Otterbein group will continue to work on data analysis, particularly regarding measurements of low-level data quality and detector properties relevant for calibration and systematic errors. The group is the sole support for the MicroBooNE online monitor and event display systems. On DUNE, the group is just starting the first steps and are exploring opportunities in wire plane (APA) manufacturing databases, cryogenic instrumentation and slow control, trigger systems and event displays. All of this work will enable the crucial measurements that both experiments will make regarding the nature of neutrinos. A special contribution of this award and an exciting broader impact of this research program is the development and implementation of 3D visualization tools to guide the physics analyses of the experiments and to render visible to students and the public the nature of neutrino interactions as recorded and studied by scientists.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
