The coordination of the deliverables and milestones due for this time period has been one of the main tasks concerning the management of the project. Three deliverables and four milestones were submitted or acted on as planned, mainly summarising all work done during 2023:
• Deliverables:
o Management Data Plan: this deliverable provides the plan for managing the data generated, collected and handled during and after the ESSnuSB+ project. It explains how ESSnuSB+ will make them: Findable, Accessible, Inter-operable, Re-usable.
o Plan for Dissemination and exploitation including communication activities: This deliverable, also imposed by EU, provides the dissemination plan for the whole duration of the project.
o Initial facility parameters: The is to provide the initial list of parameters to be used by the ESSnuSB+ Work Package actors as a baseline/starting-point for their WP design study calculations. This is established in order to avoid divergence in the work that can result from using different parameters at different stages of the studies. The baseline values of these parameters will be subject of change, each time it is proved that the new values would increase the performance of the facility.
• Milestones:
o Review of 1st year achievements, deliverables & costs: This coincides with the first Periodic Report.
o First design of the hadron collector (WP3): The proton beam impinging onto a fixed target will produce secondary particles that include pions. Pions will be focused by a magnetic horn system and guided to the LEnuSTORM decay ring by a single magnetic horn. In the ESSnuSB project, a methodology based on a specific machine learning technic, called genetic algorithm, has been used to optimize the shape of horn’s conductor. The same method is used for ESSnuSB+ to obtain the first design.
o Identification of requirements for LEnuSTORM / monitored beam near detector (WP5): The ESSnuSB+ project aims to design a near-near detector to be used with neutrino beams arising from the two proposed new facilities, LEnuSTORM and LEMNB. These facilities will produce precisely known fluxes of neutrinos and the detector will be able to measure the neutrino cross sections at the energy regime required by the ESSnuSB project with very high precision. To identify the requirements for the design of Near Detector we have used fluxes from the two facilities and estimated the neutrino energy distributions in various sizes cylindrical detectors.
o Identification of the location and layout of the LINAC transfer line (WP6): LEMNB requires the observation of muons produced in the beam decay tunnel at a single particle level. The design of the transfer line from the ESS LINAC impacts the beam time structure because the transfer line could be used to change the spill structure at the price of cost increase and complexity. The found optimal (minimum cost, minimum complexity) transfer line does not change the time structure of the current ESS LINAC and extracts a fraction of its power using the same spill length (2.86 ms). This scenario was investigated using a preliminary simulation of the MNB based on the existing ENUBET packages and codes and turned out to be viable. Since the transfer line does not manipulate the beam, we chose a location that minimizes the civil engineering cost.
On top of the above activities, concerning WP2, after a series of meetings with Zinkgruvan Mining AB (ZMAB) in the beginning of the year (2023) the company was officially invited to joint ESSνSB+ Consortium. ZMAB is now officially a member of ESSνSB+ Consortium. Also, this year (2023) key visits were made to neutrino infrastructures, both active and underground construction, and located in active and inactive mining areas. Visits to Snolab in Sudbury (Canada) and Hyper-K/Super-K (Japan) were conducted during 2023.
Concerning the ESS site activities, a schedule of construction along with Licensing aspects has been introduced. The cost for completion was considered in order to propose a staged approach for the construction projects. More financial input is needed from the rest of the WP as well as input of the explicit needs for realizing ESSνSB+ versus the long-term strategic goals for the project.
WP4 is well on track with the work towards the project objectives and has launched activities at all partners and within all tasks. It came out that the coordination across work packages is crucial for the performance of the research facility and to this end WP4 actively pursues continuous dialogue with other work packages.
Crucial boundary conditions to the design work have been identified and we are steadily working towards defining the nominal operation parameters of the LEnuSTORM. For example, an injection scheme in the muon storage ring has been identified. The orientation of the ring with respect to the detector has been set, and a first design of the ring exists. The evaluation of the existing ESSνSB design continues.
