Charles E Lane

Our primary goal is to improve the understanding of the properties and interactions of neutrinos. We are pursuing this by means of the DUNE long-baseline and PROSPECT short-baseline neutrino experiments. For DUNE, a neutrino beam from Fermilab will be detected at the SURF facility in South Dakota, with the aim of determining the neutrino mass hierarchy (the mass ordering of neutrino flavors), and a measurement or limit on CP-violation via neutrinos. Our near-term experimental goal is to improve the characterization of the neutrino beam by measurements of muons produced as a byproduct of neutrino beam generation, to quantify the beam composition and flux. The short-range neutrino program has the aim of using the HFIR reactor at Oak Ridge as a neutrino source, with a detector placed nearby to find if there are short-distance oscillations to sterile neutrino flavors, and to resolve the 'reactor neutrino spectral anomaly' which has shown up as an unexplained 'bump' in the neutrino energy spectrum in recent experiments.

Experimental studies of neutrino properties, with particular emphasis on neutrino oscillation, mass and mixing parameters. This research was pursued by means of underground detectors for reactor anti-neutrinos, measuring the flux and energy spectra of the neutrinos. More recent investigations have been aimed and developing detector technologies for a long-baseline neutrino experiment (LBNE) using a neutrino beam from Fermilab.

The goals of this research are the experimental testing of fundamental theories of physics beyond the standard model and the exploration of cosmic phenomena through the techniques of particle physics. We are working on the MACRO experiment, which employs a large-area underground detector to search fore grand unification magnetic monopoles and dark matter candidates and to study cosmic ray muons as well as low- and high-energy neutrinos; the Chooz experiment to search for reactor neutrino oscillations at a distance of 1 km from the source; a new proposal (the Perry experiment) to construct a one-kiloton liquid scintillator in the Fairport, Ohio underground facility IMB to study neutrino oscillations with a 13 km baseline; and development of technology for improved liquid scintillators and for very-low-background materials in support of the MACRO and Perry experiments and for new solar neutrino experiments.