A new particle physics facility in Europe EU-funded scientists performed a conceptual design study towards the development of a high-tech facility that could investigate neutrino oscillations. The proposal put forward included a detailed evaluation of future facilities, technical optimisation of the required components and the cost-to-performance ratio. Energy © Thinkstock Remarkable insight over the years into the structure of matter has revealed that everything in the Universe is made from 12 fundmental particles. Understanding how these interact has successfully explained an array of experimental results and precisely predicted a wide variety of phenomena. Recent discoveries that one group of these fundamental particles, the neutrinos, change type as they travel through space – a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillations – has generated a great deal of interest. Apart from being interesting in their own right, neutrino oscillations indicate that the mass of neutrinos – albeit tiny – is not zero as expected, and that neutrinos may explain a long standing puzzle in the Big Bang and have played an important role in the birth of the Universe. In order to make detailed measurements of neutrino oscillations, new high intensity beam-based facilities are required. Accepted methods for generating the neutrinos include a neutrino super-beam,a beta beam or from the decay of muons (referred to as neutrino factories). The EU-funded 'A high intensity neutrino oscillation facility in Europe′ (EUROnu) project aimed to identify and evaluate the facilities that could undertake such detailed neutrino studies. Partners performed a conceptual design of three potential facilities located at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva. For the neutrino super-beam and the beta beam the oscillation parameters would be measured 130 km away in the Fréjus tunnel under the Alps. For the neutrino factory, detectors would be placed up to 2 500 km away. Collectively, the EUROnu project addressed the technical challenges of the accelerator facilities and of the detector options necessary to measure the neutrino oscillation parameters and produced appropriate design proposals. After estimating the cost of construction, partners recommended to the appropriate authorities that the neutrino factory would bring the most precise measurements of neutrino oscillations despite its higher cost. In addition to the indispensable knowledge of the properties of neutrinos, implementation of the EUROnu recommendations would make Europe the leader in the field.
