Abstract

Four Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPC) holding in total around 80 ktons of liquid will be constructed in the next ten years in South Dakota as the Far Detector of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), for a rich neutrino and proton decay science programme. The availability of two variants of the LArTPC technology, single- and dual-phase, and the scaling up by two orders of magnitude from the previous largest such detector (ICARUS) call for an extensive prototyping and demonstration programme and a side-by-side comparison of the two options.

The ProtoDUNE programme is carried out at the multi-million, purpose-built CERN Neutrino Facility through two 800 ton LArTPCs (one for each option), where the final detector configurations and engineering solutions will be fully characterised, offering also an ideal environment for the development of Data Acquisition, Data Reconstruction and Analysis, and the development of the community of scientists and engineers who will build and operate DUNE . I will present the two prototypes, their beamlines, their physics programmes and their current status.