The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a 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

This ambitious program also includes the search for Nucleon Decay and the astrophysical observations of Galactic Supernovae.  

Neutrinos produced by 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.

One of these modules will be a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) with a Vertical Drift. A Photo-Detection System (PDS) is installed alongside the TPC to provide timing information on the events.  The DUNE team at APC is highly invested in the design and production of the PDS system, and the work of this stage will be framed within this effort. 

A large-scale prototype, ProtoDUNE-VD, with almost a kilo-ton of LAr has been installed at the CERN Neutrino Platform and will be filled with LAr during January 2025. The commissioning of the detector will therefore take place during the months to follow. The proposed stage is centered on the commissioning of the PDS system. Special runs of calibration data will be acquired with the goal of verifying the working conditions of the installed detectors, and their performance. The selected candidate will analyze this data with the goal to demonstrate that the performance of the detectors meets DUNE's requirements: in particular, the noise levels of the detectors, the ability to detect single photons, as well as large signal transmission. This will provide a perfect opportunity to become familiar with the DUNE experiment and DUNE's standard software tools in view of continuing towards a PhD thesis.