DUNE Projects

Yale is one of two key U.S. assembly sites for DUNE’s Charge Readout Planes (CRPs). These large detector elements are critical to the DUNE Far Detector system, recording and reading out the charged signals from particle interactions. At Wright Lab, our team receives parts from institutions and labs across the world and assembles them into a CRP that we cryogenically test. Once a CRP passes testing, we ship them to the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota for installation. Every CRP must meet strict quality and performance standards to ensure DUNE can achieve its scientific goals.

The NP02 coldbox serves as a full-scale cryogenic testbed for prototyping different DUNE detector technologies. Our group is involved in the operation and testing of Charge Readout Planes (CRPs) here. We study the CRP performance under varying operating conditions to better understand their noise characteristics. The coldbox is also equipped with a high-voltage cathode, enabling additional physics measurements, such as studying the transparency of the CRPS to  electrons using cosmic rays.

ProtoDUNE-VD is the largest vertical drift (VD) liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) ever built and serves as a critical prototype for the future DUNE FDs. Three of the four bottom Charge Readout Units (CRUs) were built, tested, and shipped from Wright Lab to CERN, with our group playing a key role in their installation. We remain actively engaged with the detector throughout commissioning, preparing for full operations in Fall 2025, when a charged particle beam will be directed into the detector. Studying these particles will provide critical insight into the performance we can expect from DUNE’s vertical drift technology.

Our group is involved in the simulation and study of DUNE Far Detector (FD) Monte Carlo, covering a range of physics topics from atmospheric neutrinos to rare processes, with a focus on the vertical drift (VD) detector. To prepare for real FD data, our simulations must replicate reality as closely as possible. Equally important is ensuring that the events we care about are reliably triggered in future data. Our group plays a key role in integrating low-level trigger information into FD physics studies. In addition, our group is utilizing AI/ML tools to improve the reconstruction of various processes in the FD system.

Before the DUNE beam turns on, the first neutrino measurements from the DUNE Far Detectors (FD) will come from atmospheric neutrinos. These naturally occurring neutrinos are produced when cosmic rays strike the Earth’s atmosphere. Our group is preparing for these measurements by studying detailed FD simulations, with a particular focus on the vertical drift (VD) which will be the first operation FD module.