The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next-generation long baseline neutrino experiment which aims to:

• Discover CP Violation in the leptonic sector 
• Determine the neutrino Mass Ordering 
• Precisely measure neutrino oscillation parameters
• Test the 3-flavour paradigm

The two upcoming long baseline experiments DUNE (US) and HyperK (Japan), herald a new era of precision for the measurement of the oscillation parameters, by achieving high statistics and critically by controlling the associated systematic uncertainties.

In DUNE, neutrinos from a high power wide-band neutrino beam produced at Fermilab, will be detected at a baseline of 1300 km, by 4 giant liquid argon (LAr) detector modules deep underground (SURF laboratory, South Dakota), each module containing 17ktons of LAr.  French groups are heavily invested in the construction of one of the first two Far Detector modules known as the Vertical Drift module.   A new large-scale prototype of this detector, known as protoDUNE Vertical Drift, will be operated this year at CERN and characterised in a charged particle beam (with electrons, muons, pions, protons and kaons).

The DUNE Far Detectors, being deep underground, have an ambitious off-beam physics program which includes the study of atmospheric neutrinos. Atmospheric neutrinos, having a wider energy span than the beam neutrinos, also oscillate as they voyage through the Earth allowing to measure the oscillation parameters complementary to the beam experiment.  

The APC group has been invested in the study of atmospheric neutrinos for the past 3 years, and is particularly interested in studying effects that impact the measurement of atmospheric and beam neutrinos such as event reconstruction which impact the estimation of neutrino energy. 

The estimation of neutrino energy is required for the neutrino oscillation analysis, systematic effects impacting this estimation, therefore, translate to a reduction in the experiment’s sensitivity to the neutrino Mass Ordering and CP violation, as well as reducing the precision achievable on the oscillation parameters. Until recently, systematic effects and their strengths have been applied based on estimations from other experiments.  Now, led by the APC group, the effort begins to estimate the systematic uncertainties based on the DUNE simulation and data from the new ProtoDUNE Vertical Drift.  In this internship various systematic effects will be studied, particularly regarding those that impact the event reconstruction. The effect of these systematics on the experiment’s sensitivity to the oscillation parameters through the atmospheric neutrino analysis will be explored.   The aim is to understand which uncertainties impact the oscillation experiment the most, so the collaboration can prioritise its efforts into mitigating and/or measuring them.