Representatives from Fermilab, Unicamp and CBPF visited the facilities of AKAER, Brazilian business partner of the LBNF/DUNE project since 2020
AKAER received, in the first half of March, the visit of Lia Merminga, director of the American laboratory Fermilab, in her first visit to Brazil. Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is responsible for the largest particle physics project in the world and counts on investments of more than three billion dollars by the United States Department of Energy, plus investments from international partners that together exceed five billion dollars.
The delegation included important representatives from Fermilab, the University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Brazilian Center for Physics Research (CBPF) to celebrate the achievements obtained in the first phase of the LBNF/Dune Project, supported by FAPESP (São Paulo State Research Support Foundation), and to continue the actions for the second phase.
AKAER was a partner in the first phase of the project through the company Equatorial Sistemas, and reinforced during the meeting the ability to support Fermilab and partners in the next phase of the program. The representatives of the entities were received by Akaer’s CEO, Cesar Silva.
The LBNF/Dune (Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility and Deep Underground Neutrino Facility) project is a program for neutrino and elementary particle research that will make it possible to investigate new subatomic phenomena and increase knowledge about neutrinos and their role in the formation of the universe.
Besides the technical visit to Akaer’s facilities, on the same day, March 13, in the morning, the Gleb Wataghin Physics Institute (IFGW), at Unicamp, held a workshop on argon purification, the presentation of the results obtained in the first phase of the LBNF/Dune project and the planning of the work to be carried out and the technologies to be developed in the second phase.
The event included presentations by Akaer, Unicamp and Fermilab. Present at the workshop opening were the Unicamp rector, Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, the pro-rector of Research, João Marcos Romano, the IFGW director, Mônica Cotta, the deputy director of the LBNF/Dune project, Ron Ray, Akaer vice-president, Fernando Coelho, and Cezar Celeste Ghizoni, CEO of Equatorial Sistemas.
Purifying Argon and Detecting Neutrinos
The LBNF/Dune project is the largest project to study particle physics in the world and will investigate the structure of matter in depth and bring answers to important questions about the formation of the universe. Scholars around the world estimate that neutrinos will be part of major discoveries in physics in the next 10 or 20 years. LBNF/Dune consists in the installation of a large neutrino detector in Leads, South Dakota, at a depth of 1,400 meters, to identify neutrinos emitted by a beam generated from Fermilab’s headquarters in the city of Batava, Illinois, located at a distance of 1,300 kilometers.
The neutrino detector in South Dakota will cover an underground area equivalent to eight soccer fields, formed by three caves. In two of them the particle detection equipment will be installed. A third, central cave will have equipment for the purification, circulation and condensation of argon, the noble gas used in liquid form for the experiments. When fully operational, the Dune facilities will use about 70,000 tons of liquid argon.
Unicamp’s participation in the development of the project focuses on the development and scale production of the equipment used for purifying the argon. The technology used in this process is developed in the IFGW laboratories, including the improvement of the inputs used for filtering the liquid argon. The technology used until now by Fermilab was able to remove the oxygen involved in it, which hinders the interaction between the argon and the neutrinos, essential for particle detection. With the technology developed at Unicamp, it will also be possible to capture nitrogen, increasing the purity of the liquefied gas and expanding the use of identification techniques, such as scintillation.
Another Unicamp’s contribution to the project is the presence of the X-Arapuca in the detector, a device created at the University and responsible for the neutrino identification through the capture of light emitted from the interaction of the neutrino with the argon in the tanks. It is expected that 1,500 of these devices will be installed in Dune. The X-Arapuca technology was developed from research conducted by professors Ettore Segreto and Ana Amélia Machado, from IFGW, and also included the participation of AKAER.
In phase two of the project, the challenge will be to produce the equipment in quantity and in full scale and transport them to the United States. For this, the partnership with Akaer is decisive. Add another challenge: to elaborate a production and transport dynamics that will allow us to take the equipment to the depths of the caves where it will be installed. “It is like building a ship inside a bottle, each detail is a new challenge,” compares Fernando Coelho, vice-president of Akaer.
Professor at the IFGW and project leader at Unicamp, Pascoal Pagliuso highlights the importance of the whole initiative not only for scientific development, but also for the economy and job generation. “This is an extraordinary opportunity for the country. Everything will be built in Brazil, under Unicamp’s leadership. It is an investment of the country in the country. We cannot let this moment pass by.”
“For Brazil, being part of DUNE is extremely important, as it takes us to another level of technological development and allows the Brazilian scientific community to participate in a large-scale project. For Akaer, it means entering a scientific development study. We will take a quality leap in several technologies that involve low temperatures, high reliability and complexity, all in a huge scale. We will enter another field of activity that would not be possible to invest in so soon if it were not for this project,” concludes Ghizoni, Equatorial’s CEO.