LBNE()
The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment
()
- Approved: 2010,
- Cancelled: Jan, 2015
Successor Experiment:
LBNE Collaboration
Recent, irrefutable evidence establishes that the ubiquitous neutrinos have tiny masses. Neutrino mass is physics beyond the Standard Model and is arguably the most important discovery in particle physics in the last quarter century. The mass of the neutrino is most likely of a very special character, such that the neutrino is its own antiparticle. The tiny sizes of the neutrino masses point to a mechanism that not only gives neutrinos mass but allows for the possibility of explaining the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) is a project proposed to explore the mass spectrum of the neutrinos and their properties under the CP symmetry. Neutrinos can be created using protons produced at the Fermilab accelerator. If the neutrinos are directed to pass through the earth over a long distance, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillations will manifest itself such that properties of the neutrinos can be studied. The LBNE project will include building a neutrino beamline aimed at neutrino detectors constructed on the Fermilab site and at a laboratory to be located 1300 kilometers away in the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the Homestake Gold Mine near Lead, South Dakota. The massive far detector required for the neutrino project (a 50 kt liquid argon time projection chamber) will also enable a search for nucleon decay, a window into Grand Unification Theory models, and be sensitive to neutrinos produced in the cataclysm of a supernova. As part of an initiative for Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to host an international facility to support these science goals, the LBNE collaboration, established in 2010, voted to dissolve in January 2015. A new organization for the facility and experiment program is being developed.
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