DIANA, A Novel Nuclear Accelerator Lab Underground

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This proposal, from the University of Notre Dame, requests funds to develop a Preliminary Design for a two-accelerator facility underground at DUSEL. The goal for the Dakota Ion Accelerators for Nuclear Astrophysics (DIANA) facility is to address three long standing fundamental problems in nuclear astrophysics: Solar neutrino sources and the core metallicity of the sun, carbon-based nucleosynthesis, and neutron sources for the production of trans-Fe elements in stars.The award, through a Cooperative Agreement with the University of Notre Dame, will fund the design of this facility intended to provide the identification of new observational signatures such as neutrinos from the sun and distant supernovae and is closely interwoven with underground neutrino physics. The use of underground low-energy accelerator facilities, as demonstrated by the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA) at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy, has pioneered the field, but at the same time has demonstrated enormous deficiencies in our knowledge of low-energy stellar reactions. The facility will host a large number of graduate student and postdoctoral researchers and users. Small-scale facilities such as DIANA are ideal to train future generations in many aspects of nuclear physics such as nuclear reaction physics, radiation shielding, detector techniques, data analysis, and material analysis. Training professionals in these areas is essential for the national needs in medicine, energy production, defense, industry, and government.