Abstract:
A large international collaboration has been formed to carry out an ambitious project to build the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) for investigating fundamental questions in neutrino and proton decay physics. The DUNE far detector consists of four time-projection chambers (TPC) filled with 70,000 tons of liquid argon. It wil by far be the largest liquid argon neutrino experiment ever built. The ProtoDUNE experiment aims to validate the design and construction of the DUNE far detector by operating two kton-scale prototype detectors in a charged-particle beam at CERN. These two detectors will help assess different technologies for TPC ionization drift and readout (single and dual phase TPC) that are being considered in DUNE. In this talk I will discuss the challenges of building the large prototype detectors and present some preliminary results from operation of the single-phase ProtoDUNE detector.