STATEMENT FOR DUNE CO-SPOKESPERSON ELECTION
ETTORE SEGRETO
I spent the first half of my scientific career working at the National Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory in Italy. Beginning as an undergraduate I worked on the development of liquid argon detectors for neutrino and then Dark Matter experiments, including ICARUS, WArP and DarkSide. Each of these introduced significant technological innovations in LArTPC technology. I was responsible for some pioneering work which is now part of the reference literature. When I moved to Brazil with my family in 2015 as Professor at University of Campinas (UNICAMP), I was fascinated by this country and the opportunity to build a research program from scratch. I arrived with many dreams, ideas, enthusiasm and a special small box in Ana's luggage. It contained a dichroic filter I had bought on the internet, some reflectors and a solid state silicon sensor. This box was dubbed ARAPUCA, a Brazilian native word for rudimentary bird traps, and was the seed for our goal of developing an innovative light detector for large liquid argon experiments. Brazil and Latin America were the ideal place to grow this idea up and the DUNE experiment the ideal place to put it into practice. We were able to aggregate a multiethnic community around the ARAPUCA project: first with new colleagues at UNICAMP, then at research institutions and universities in Brazil and then in Latin America, US, Europe and Asia. This experience taught me how to deal with different cultures and make these differences an added value for our scientific community and the research we pursued.
I was elected leader of the DUNE Photon Detection Consortium in 2017, when the consortia were formed, and I am extremely proud of what this consortium has become. It numbers more than 200 members from 50 institutions of 9 countries and 3 continents (America, Europe and Asia). As leader of the consortium, I applied the principles of innovation, equity and internationalization with a broad sharing of the responsibilities among the participating institutions and the consortium members. The new technology I had proposed, was developed in the PD Consortium with a highly collaborative effort shared among Latin American, US and European institutions. Through this effort, we were able to improve the overall performances of the detector, especially at low energy, and the recent developments for the Vertical Drift module promise to do even better. It is my intention to keep this same approach for the entire DUNE Collaboration, emphasizing and building on internationalization to bring different scientific cultures together and with it new resources and innovative ideas.
In order to reach all the DUNE physics goals, the collaboration must build an experiment with four far detector modules, a powerful near detector and the most intense neutrino beam ever built. Though there are evident challenges, there is a path to achieve this ambitious goal which passes through the commitment and dedication of every single collaboration member.
The Near Detector is an essential element of the experiment, it is required to achieve the target oscillation physics sensitivities. The near detector design has made impressive progress in the last few years. The formation of ND consortia was an important step and a further internationalization and a broader participation of collaboration members will rapidly close the gap with the far detector, in terms of design, validation and simulations. The demonstration of the technological choices made for the near detector will be a turning point and we should work as a community to make this another success on which constructing the future of the experiment.
The protoDUNEs are fundamental tools to validate the technological choices for the first two modules, but also offer the chance to show that we are able to meet our goals and build sophisticated detectors. The fantastic progress since protoDUNE I, despite the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, is a powerful testament to this. The full demonstration of the Vertical Drift Technology with a new concept of charge and light read-out will be a shining demonstration of our capability to innovate and turn innovation into working technology. Every effort should be made to ensure the success of the protoDUNEs in the next two years, which should also be an aggregation center for the entire collaboration.
At this stage the most essential priority towards securing the full experiment is demonstrate we can build the first two far detector modules with no further budget or schedule delay: this would demonstrate the strength of the collaboration and reinforce our credibility in front of the scientific community and the funding agencies. The ongoing Snowmass and future P5 processes are critical venues for promoting our science goals and technological successes. We need also to energetically pursue similar opportunities in other regions.
As an European researcher working in Latin America I will represent the internationality and diversity of the DUNE Collaboration, trying to be one of the points of contact between different cultures. I had the direct experience of how much this can have mutual and undoubted advantages: I had the pleasure to participate to the UK-Latin America program which promoted many exchange activities and was the driving force for the involvement of many new LA groups and young students in DUNE. I will encourage and promote this kind of initiatives at all levels.
I am deeply sensitive to the difficulties that students and researchers who are less fortunate, for geographical reasons or for personal conditions, face every day as they strive to deliver high-level research. They make enormous personal sacrifices and often fight against systems that are indifferent to science, with scarce resources, impossibility to travel and without recognition. More broadly, I will take personal responsibility to ensure that the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion are respected at all levels of each consortium and of each board or committee of the collaboration.
I have great consideration for our students, postdoc and young researchers who invest their time and energies in our experiment. They represent the best resource we have and we need to invest in them with confidence, since they are the ones who will operate the DUNE experiment. I will pay particular attention to keeping this essential part of the collaboration engaged and informed.
Finally, I have a profound respect and appreciation for the work done by the current Co-Spokespersons and I am eager to work with Gina Rameika and the rest of the DUNE management in the next years.