Mar 13 2021 Read 2896 Times
A team of engineers and technicians at the STFC’s Daresbury Laboratory and its university partners in the North-West have started production on vital detector components for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) hosted by Fermilab in the US. The UK government has invested £65 million into this major international science experiment which will study elusive neutrinos in a bid to advance our understanding of the origin and structure of the Universe.
Scientists will capture the neutrinos in detectors containing 17,000 tons of liquid argon, with the tiny electrical signals of neutrino interactions read out by Anode Plane Assemblies (APA). APAs are huge rectangular planes covered with thousands of copper-beryllium wires, about the width of a human hair. Each APA stands at an impressive 2.3m by 6.3m – making them the largest individual components for DUNE, and they have to be built with millimetre precision.