Accelerator-Based Experimental Neutrino Physics

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One of the major intellectual achievements of the 20th century was the development of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. This model succeeded in classifying all of the elementary particles known at the time into a hierarchy of groups having similar quantum properties. The validity of this model to date was recently confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. However, the Standard Model as it currently exists leaves open many questions about the universe, including such fundamental questions as to why the Higgs mass has the value it has and why there is no antimatter in the universe. One of the primary areas to search for answers to these and other open questions about the universe, how it came to be and why it is the way it is, is to focus on a study of the properties of neutrinos and to use what we know and can learn about neutrinos as probes of science beyond the Standard Model. Neutrinos are those elementary particles that interact with practically nothing else in the universe. They have no electric charge and were once thought to be massless. Like other elementary particles, they were believed to have an antimatter counterpart, the antineutrino. Moreover, the Standard Model predicted that there were actually three different kinds of neutrinos that were distinguishable through the different interactions that they did undergo whenever there was an interaction. But recent measurements have totally changed our picture of neutrinos. We now know that neutrinos do have a mass and because they do, they can actually change from one type to another. Detailed measurements of these changes, along with other current neutrino experiments, form one of the most promising ways to probe for new physics beyond the Standard Model. There have also been hints in various experiments of new types of neutrinos and clarifying these "hints" is one of the main thrusts of the work in this project. The work proposed here will be to further analyze data from the MINERvA experiment and contribute to the development of the Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) technology for use in neutrino physics as part of the LArIAT test beam program and the MicroBooNE experiment. These three neutrino experiments are all located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL). The main focus for the period of this project will be on the development of the LArTPC detector for MicroBooNE. MicroBooNE is currently under construction and will begin collecting neutrino data in 2014, so a large focus of the group over the next three years will be on detector commissioning, calibration, and analysis of MicroBooNE data. This experiment should significantly increase the physics reach toward answering the important question of whether predicted "sterile" neutrinos exist and resolving the anomalies in recent neutrino experiments.In addition to the contribution to the fundamental neutrino physics mentioned above, this research will serve as an invaluable proving ground for the calibration, reconstruction and analysis techniques that will be needed to make future experiments a success.The Broader Impact in this proposal involves bringing current techniques in high energy physics to the broader local community. The south side neighborhoods surrounding the UChicago campus are largely populated with underrepresented groups in STEM fields, and this project aims to build a program within the Department of Physics that connects university students with local elementary and middle school children to introduce them to concepts in physics with the aid of fun, interactive demonstrations.