High-pressure operation of optical time projection chambers for neutrino physics

Speeding up the numerical solution of the Boltzmann Equation in Diffusion Approximation

Supervisor: Pablo Amedo Martínez

Supervisor: Diego Rodas Rodríguez

The recent technological demonstration of the ability to reconstruct minimum ionizing particles and time-tagging the interaction, simultaneously, by using ultra-fast optical cameras (2ns event rate) is transformational towards next-generation neutrino and rare event experiments. The ability to reconstruct the interaction at 2mm-sampling and 1ns-resolution, for the first time in gas phase, will allow to reconstruct the neutrino interaction to unprecedented precision in next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments, such as DUNE.

We aim at an experimental campaign in July this year, designed to explore the pressure range above atmospheric (1-3bar) and establish the detector performance in those conditions, about half its way towards the envisaged conditions of our technological demonstrator (7bar).

Besides participating in the experimental campaign, working as part of a team, we expect the student to help processing the event images, and characterizing the detector performance in view of its final application as a neutrino detector.