To investigate this, the team will study neutrinos — the most abundant particles of matter in the Universe, to determine whether they hold the key to understanding why the Universe is made predominantly of matter rather than antimatter.
Known as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), the project brings together scientists and engineers from around the world, alongside teams from major research organisations including Fermilab, CERN and the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF).
Once complete, the facility will enable scientists to send a beam of neutrinos from Illinois, USA, on an 800-mile (1,300-kilometre) journey through the Earth’s crust to huge liquid-argon detectors deep underground in South Dakota.
A second detector, located close to the neutrino beam’s source in Illinois, will measure the particles before they begin their journey. By comparing the measurements taken at the two sites, scientists hope to gain new insights into the fundamental properties of neutrinos and the role they may have played in shaping our universe. Together, the facilities in Illinois and South Dakota form the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), which will provide the infrastructure for this groundbreaking experiment.
Here in Bristol, academics from the University’s School of Physics are leading the UK DUNE DAQ project, a consortium of eight UK institutes responsible for delivering the data-acquisition system for the DUNE experiment.
The system will receive and manage the enormous volumes of data generated by the experiment’s vast detectors, the equivalent of around 500 million laptop hard drives worth of data every year.
As well as leading the DAQ project, Bristol is also responsible for delivering a system of custom electronics (known as the ‘timing system’) which will synchronise the signals from the DUNE detectors to nanosecond precision.
“This is an absolutely mission critical system - it will be the first thing the detectors are connected to, and nothing works without it” explained Jim Brooke, Professor of Physics and University of Bristol project lead.
The underground space of DUNE is planned to be completed by 2029, and the detector apparatus in 2030. From that date, an 1800-strong worldwide team of researchers will begin probing the laws of nature more deeply than ever before, observing particles from the Sun and outer space. Using Fermilab’s PIP-II accelerator upgrade, the terrestrial neutrino beam is expected to be sent to the underground detectors in South Dakota by 2031, enabling DUNE’s long-term scientific programme.