Dear DUNE,
As we close this calendar year, we wish you all happy holidays. Thanks to your dedication and hard work, despite facing many challenges, this has been a very productive year for us, and we have advanced on various fronts.
The success of ProtoDUNE-VD has marked an important milestone for us in demonstrating the vertical drift technology at scale for the far detectors. The final design and production readiness reviews for FD-VD and FD-HD are in full swing and various production campaigns have been successfully launched. All the cryostat material arrived at SURF last year, and we are actively preparing to start installation in the new year. All near detector technologies (SAND, TMS, ND-LAr, PRISM) have been progressing well on all fronts with active prototyping and testing underway and are steadily moving towards final design reviews. The ND-Lar “2×2” non-beam run at Fermilab has been launched successfully and already demonstrating new systems and techniques as reported at this month’s collaboration call. Earlier this year, we received the (re)direction from DOE on the near detector which resulted in the removal of the $200M cost cap on the US-ND scope and allows ND to proceed on a technically limited schedule. This is a very welcome development.
We have successfully launched the DUNE AI/ML forum this year. We had a very successful Phlex Software framework review. We made enormous progress on the development of computing, software, simulation, reconstruction, and analysis tools, and using them to develop physics analyses and updating sensitivities. Simultaneously we are actively analyzing the data collected from FD and ND prototypes and pushing towards publishing more papers on all topics. We have also published a white paper on DUNE Phase-II and are actively doing R&D and prototyping to plan for future. We had strong representation and engagement in the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update (ESPPU) which played an important role in influencing the strategy process. The ESPPU 2025 recommendations released few days ago clearly noted DUNE and CERN neutrino platform as a priority which is excellent news. We have revamped various committees/boards (e.g., outreach/education, speakers) and our international engagements. We welcomed Laura Rogas as our new collaboration coordinator.
Of course, we faced some challenges as well e.g., with the near site conventional facilities and delays with the start of cryostat installation at SURF which we are working to address with high priority, but overall, this has been a successful year for us. We are proud of what we have accomplished as a collaboration and thank you all once again for your hard work and contributions. We are stronger as a collaboration and as an experiment because of you.
We hope that you all have a restful holiday break and a wonderful time with your family and friends!
Best wishes,
Sowjanya & Sergio