ANDES Project
The first underground laboratory in Latin America for the study of astroparticles
ANDES (Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site) is a unique proposal in Latin America for the construction of an underground laboratory for research in the area of astroparticles, an area that has seen strong growth in the last 30 years. ANDES is expected to operate for 100 years from its start-up and would be located within a mega-road project planned in the current “Paso Agua Negra” in the province of San Juan. This mega-project is called the “Agua Negra Tunnel” and proposes to connect the province of San Juan (Argentina) with the region of Coquimbo (Chile), crossing the Andes mountain range.
Official website: andeslab.org
Why an underground laboratory?
Cosmic rays or astroparticles constantly bombard the Earth. Approximately fifteen million subatomic particles impact each square meter of the Earth’s surface in one day. These come from the Sun, from supernova explosions or from black holes of millions of solar masses in the centre of distant galaxies.
The scientific community is building underground laboratories to protect itself from this cosmic radiation in order to investigate the most elusive phenomena in the Universe. At 1,700 m below the Earth’s surface, only a few subatomic particles are able to penetrate the rock layers, allowing the study of the properties of very weak particles such as neutrinos or dark matter without interference.
For more information, visit the ANDES website.
How does ITEDA participate in this project?
The Institute of Astroparticle Detection Technologies (ITeDA) is the main astroparticle institute in Argentina and responsible for the ANDES project by the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA).
Among its multiple lines of research is the study of the propagation of muons in rock. In particular, the muon flux that will exist in ANDES was studied in the framework of a Bachelor’s thesis in Physics. This thesis was recognized with the Masperi award from the Argentine Physics Association.
In parallel, progress is being made in the construction of muon detectors, based on the counters of the AMIGA project, which were also developed and built at ITeDA within the framework of the Pierre Auger Observatory. Currently, the design and operation are being adapted to be able to measure the directional flux of muons in underground laboratories.
In the future, it is planned to carry out a first detection of muons in the Casposo mine (San Juan, Argentina), in order to train human resources with knowledge on the operation of experiments in an underground environment.
The use of cryogenic MMC detectors (magnetic metal calorimeters) for particle physics constitutes another area of work in our institution that can impact the ANDES project. These detectors are being developed within the framework of the QUBIC project and are promising for the search for dark matter and neutrino physics due to their high precision.
