Unicamp formalized a scientific cooperation agreement with the laboratory fermilab, in the United States, responsible for one of the largest scientific projects today for the study of neutrinos, the Dune – Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. The agreement provides for the exchange of students, initially from the postgraduate course of the Department of Cosmic Rays and Chronology, at the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics (IFGW). Students must do internships in the laboratory located in the city of Batavia, near Chicago.
According to professor Ernesto Kemp, executor of the agreement at Unicamp who is in the United States, “the work of physics students will take place in both the experimental and theoretical spheres. Experimental research involves developing components and construction techniques and optimizing the new generation of neutrino detectors. In the theoretical area, students are involved in all branches of neutrino physics that can be explored by DUNE, ranging from studying the intrinsic properties of these particles, to the astrophysics of supernovae that DUNE has the capacity to detect”. Kemp also stated that researchers will be able to perform data analysis and simulations. “It’s a great opportunity that will contribute to the training process of Brazilian students.”
Researchers from the cosmic ray department have been establishing a leading role in the Dune experiment. Professor Ettore Segreto created the arapuca project, which is a strong candidate to be the photon detection system (SDF), one of the detectors that make up DUNE (see here), in addition to being the leader in the construction of this system. Professor Kemp coordinates the integration of the SDF with the other DUNE detectors.
Large particle physics experiments take place in large laboratories because they are high-cost research, conducted by international collaborations involving dozens of countries and hundreds of universities and laboratories around the world. In the 1980s, according to the professor, some Brazilian researchers, one of them the physicist Carlos Escobar, also from Unicamp, began cooperating with the North Americans. “At the time they were particle collider experiments. The neutrino program didn’t exist yet.” Later, traditional collider physics became focused at CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland, and neutrino physics using particle beams has been carried out mainly in Japan and the United States, in similar experiments, but smaller in size than the gigantic DUNE.
Kemp describes the experiment as generating an intense beam of neutrinos at Fermilab that will travel about 1300 km, traversing the Earth's crust. The beam will be detected in a laboratory in South Dakota. The detector will be made of 40 thousand tons of liquid argon instrumented with very high precision equipment, installed in an underground laboratory almost 1400 meters deep (see more details). “It’s a very challenging experiment from a technological point of view,” he adds. According to Kemp, precision neutrino physics, which is what we intend to carry out at Fermilab, is one of the priorities of the various scientific advisory panels that exist around the world.
For the executor of the agreement, the agreement will result in increasingly stronger foundations for Unicamp's participation in research. In the future, the idea is for the university to be included in a multidisciplinary way. “Neutrino science has a very high demand for work in various areas of exact and technological sciences, not just physics, and can open up multiple opportunities at Unicamp.”
