Contributions to LBNE at University of Hawaii

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment is designed for many scientific motivations, such as CP violation in neutrino sector, neutrino mass hierarchy, testing the three flavor paradigm, observation of nucleon decay and supernova burst neutrinos. The research works on LBNE in University of Hawaii at Manoa focus on the R&D related to photon detection system including hardware development and software simulation.

The photon detection system provides trigger for cosmic backgrounds and improves the energy resolution of the detector. It enhances supernova burst trigger efficiency. The ability of providing absolute timing could improve event localization and particle identification capability which will result in mitigation of cosmic ray backgrounds for surface detector, identifying the K⁺ background to proton decay for underground detector and improving rejection of cosmic ray spallation backgrounds from activation of Ar nuclei.

The University of Hawaii undertakes the responsibility to choose Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPM) that meet certain specifications for the life of the experiment, characterize and test the SiPM performance. The nitrogen laser system for characterizing and testing the SiPM in our research lab is shown in the figure below. As selected photon detection device, the SiPMs need to be carefully characterized in order to provide the required precision for the photon detection system in terms of energy and timing.

Meanwhile, the simulation work is on its starting stage whose ultimate goal is to fully understand the performance of the photon detection system. Currently, all the photon detection modules have been incorporated into 35t geometry. The fast optical simulation is being upgraded to incorporate detection efficiencies and attenuation effect. More results will be coming out in the near future.

Last modified on Oct. 3, 2014 by ysun7@hawaii.edu