Batavia, Illinois, USA · founded 1967
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
The US Department of Energy's premier particle-physics laboratory and the host of the world's most intense accelerator-produced neutrino beams. Fermilab operates the NuMI and Booster neutrino beamlines and is constructing the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility for DUNE.
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Focus
High-energy proton accelerator complex and associated physics program. Home to the NuMI neutrino beam and, beginning in the late 2020s, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility feeding DUNE.
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Accelerator complex
Fermilab’s Main Injector provides 120 GeV protons at power levels up to 1 MW for the NuMI beam, which feeds NOvA at 810 km baseline. The Booster accelerator at 8 GeV supplies the short-baseline program (MicroBooNE, SBND, ICARUS) with lower-energy neutrinos.
Current and planned programs
- NOvA — 14 kt liquid-scintillator far detector in Ash River, Minnesota
- Short-Baseline Neutrino Program — three liquid-argon detectors on the Booster beam line to probe sterile-neutrino hypotheses and cross-sections
- MINERvA (historical) — precision neutrino-nucleus cross-section measurements
- LBNF / DUNE — under construction; 1.2 MW upgraded to 2.4 MW beam feeding a 40 kt liquid-argon far detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, 1,300 km away
Significance
Fermilab has been central to the US neutrino program since the 1970s, and the LBNF/DUNE facility is the flagship North American neutrino project for the 2030s. Its proton-beam infrastructure, shared with the Muon g−2 and Mu2e experiments, is among the world’s most versatile.