Multiphysics Simulation of Space Charge and Electric Field for Liquid Argon Neutrino Detector

S. D. Luise [1], L. M. Bueno [1],
[1] ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Published in 2016

The DUNE experiment (http://www.dunescience.org/) is an international collaboration of more than 100 research institutes and universities (among them CERN and Fermilab) which is taking the challenge of building the next-generation experiment for the study of neutrino particles. The detector conceived to detect neutrinos consists of a gigantic cryogenic apparatus able to keep 700,000 tons of liquid Argon at the temperature of 87 K. An electric field of about 0.5 kV/cm is produced in the liquid volume by a field cage. Neutrinos interacting with the Argon nuclei produce ionizing particles, the ionization charge is drifted in the electric field to the top surface of the detector where the electron streams are amplified by a dedicated apparatus (LEM) before being digitized. A detailed description of such a physical system requires a multiphysics simulation which combines • Electrostatics • Transport diluted species and • Thermal convection. A 3D-time-dependent simulation has been developed including all the physical process from the cosmic ray flux, the species reactions, the thermal properties of the materials and the field cage configuration.

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