Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF)

The global neutrino physics community has come together to develop a leading-edge, dual-site experiment for neutrino science and proton decay studies, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), hosted at Fermilab in Batavia, IL.

The facility required for this experiment, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF), will be an internationally designed, coordinated and funded program, comprising the world's highest-intensity neutrino beam at Fermilab and the infrastructure necessary to support massive, cryogenic far detectors installed deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), 800 miles (1,300 km) downstream, in Lead, SD. LBNF is also responsible for the facilities to house the experiment's near detectors on the Fermilab site.

LBNF is tightly coordinated with the DUNE collaboration designing the detectors that will carry out its experimental program.

The DUNE Experiment and Collaboration

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, conducted with the detectors installed in the LBNF facility, is expected to achieve transformative discoveries, making definitive determinations of neutrino properties, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and the possibility of proton decay.

The DUNE scientific collaboration is responsible for designing, building and operating the detectors to do the experiment. The LBNF beamline, which will supply the required intense beam of neutrinos to the detectors at the near and far sites, builds on Fermilab's existing world-class accelerator complex, including the Main Injector and the planned Proton Improvement Plan-II (PIP-II).

Sending neutrinos on a 800 mi (1,300 km) journey

Neutrinos created by the LBNF beamline will travel 1,300 km (800 mi) to intercept DUNE's massive, cutting-edge neutrino detector at the Sanford Lab. The neutrino beam’s path will lead straight through the earth's mantle. Neutrinos pass easily through soil and rock — or kilometers of solid lead, for that matter — rarely interacting with the matter. No tunnel is needed for these ghostly particles.

How do we know this is safe?

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, a billion times more abundant than the particles that make up stars, planets and people. Each second, a trillion neutrinos from the sun and other celestial objects pass harmlessly and unnoticed through your body — and everything else. Although neutrinos are all around us, they interact so rarely with other matter that they are very difficult to observe, and consequently, they are completely harmless.

An Environmental Assessment conducted for the LBNF/DUNE project is available; it includes results from an investigation of potential impacts to human health and the environment from the construction and operation of the technical and civil facilities, and finds that the project will have no significant impact.

In this animation watch a proton beam at Fermilab accelerate and smash into a target to create a beam of neutrinos, follow the neutrinos on their journey and see what happens as they reach the DUNE detector 800 miles (1,300-km) away in South Dakota. (And don't miss the supernova!)

Media Highlights

LBNF/DUNE update: over another hurdle

Chris Mossey, LBNF Project Director

Fermilab, 1 Sep 2016: We received great news on Sept. 1: the LBNF/DUNE CD-3a milestone was approved by Undersecretary Lynn Orr on behalf of the DOE Energy Systems Acquisition Advisory Board. This critical decision milestone ... represents DOE’s green light to begin the significant amount of conventional facilities work at Sanford Underground Research Facility necessary to support the DUNE experiment. Read more...

Cosmic Depth

Tunnels and Tunnelling North America, Aug-Sep 2016: Excavation and construction of a science lab one mile underground is the first step in better understanding of neutrinos, one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe. Nicole Robinson, editor of “Tunnels and Tunnelling North America,” a publication of the Tunnelling Association of Canada (TAC), reports on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility. Read more...

DUNE and its CERN connection

The DUNE Collaboration

CERN Courier, 13 Nov 2015: The strong partnership between the US Department of Energy and CERN already established in the LHC program is one of the essential components for the success of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and the proposed Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility at Fermilab. Read more...