Speaker
Description
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next-generation long baseline neutrino experiment. By using Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detectors to detect accelerator GeV-scale neutrinos, DUNE's main physics goals are to measure the CP-violating phase, determine the neutrino mass ordering and resolve the $\theta_{23}$ octant. Besides these observations at high energy, DUNE aims to explore the MeV energy range where solar and supernovæ neutrinos can be observed. By observing neutrinos coming from the Sun, this experiment will be able to measure the solar oscillations parameters and might be capable of detecting for the first time hep neutrinos thanks to the high cross-section of the Charge-Current channel on Argon. In the low-energy regime relevant for solar neutrinos detection, DUNE faces significant backgrounds arising from neutrons, radiogenic gamma rays and cosmogenic isotopes. After evaluating the backgrounds by means of simulation, signal and background topologies have been studied to develop efficient discrimination techniques, and passive shielding has been proposed to reduce external backgrounds. To understand detector performance, DUNE has built two full-scale prototypes at CERN. At the MeV-scale, a ProtoDUNE-HD data analysis permitted to determine the detector response and energy resolution. For ProtoDUNE-VD, cosmic muons have been used to characterize the field distortion and a neutron source has been deployed to investigate experimentally the background signal.