Status of the LBNE Neutrino Beamline

TL;DR

The paper reviews the conceptual design and current status of the LBNE neutrino beamline at Fermilab, highlighting its goals, design parameters, and challenges for future high-power operation.

Contribution

It provides an overview of the LBNE beamline design, including technical considerations and readiness status for high-power neutrino beam production.

Findings

Design parameters accommodate up to 2.3 MW beam power.

The facility aims a neutrino beam toward a detector at Homestake Mine.

Status of the conceptual design and associated challenges are discussed.

Abstract

The Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) will utilize a neutrino beamline facility located at Fermilab to carry out a compelling research program in neutrino physics. The facility will aim a beam of neutrinos toward a detector placed at the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. The neutrinos are produced in a three-step process. First, protons from the Main Injector (60-120 GeV) hit a solid target and produce mesons. Then, the charged mesons are focused by a set of focusing horns into the decay pipe, towards the far detector. Finally, the mesons that enter the decay pipe decay into neutrinos. The parameters of the facility were determined taking into account several factors including the physics goals, the Monte Carlo modeling of the facility, spacial and radiological constraints and the experience gained by operating the NuMI facility at Fermilab. The initial beam power is expected to be ~700 kW, however some of the parameters were chosen to be able to deal with a beam power of 2.3 MW. We discuss here the status of the conceptual design and the associated challenges.