Dr. Tim Bolton and Dr. Glenn Horton-Smith

Email:  bolton@phys.ksu.edu  or  gahs@phys.ksu.edu

Understanding Neutrino Interactions with Liquid Argon

The high energy physics group's REU project for 2012 concerns the study of neutrino interactions in liquid argon time projection chamber detectors. A liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr TPC) detects the ionization trail of a charged particle in liquid argon, producing high resolution images of the tracks. Neutrinos are difficult to detect because they rarely interact with matter, but when these rare interactions do occur, they produce characteristic charged particle tracks. Thousands of these interactions have been recorded by the ArgoNEUT LAr TPC at Fermilab, and a larger LAr TPC named MicroBooNE is being built. Understanding these interactions is important to our fundamental understanding of the properties of neutrinos and how they affect other matter and energy in the universe. Remarkably, there is as of yet no fully-tested automated software for analyzing the charged track images to produce lists of track vectors. Volunteers are needed to help develop the automated software and compare its performance to human-scanned track data. A related study involves methods to use track information to reconstruct neutrino energy. In pursuing either study, experience would be gained with data analysis and object oriented programming tools. An opportunity to visit Fermilab during MicroBooNE construction may also be possible. For more information, see http://t962.fnal.gov/About.html and http://www-microboone.fnal.gov/.

This program is funded by the National Science Foundation through grant number PHY- 0851599.  Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.