The ANDES Underground Laboratory


Friday, 04 May 2012 9 a.m. — 10 a.m. MST

AURA Lecture Hall

NOIRLab South Colloquia
CLAUDIO DIB (Profesor Departamento de Fisica, UTFSM, Valparaíso, Chile)

ANDES (Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site) is an underground laboratory, proposed to be built inside the Agua Negra road tunnel that will connect Chile (IV Region) with Argentina (San Juan Province) under the Andes Mountains.

The Lab will be 1750 meters under the rock, becoming the 3rd deepest underground lab in the world, and the first in the Southern Hemisphere.

It will be and international Lab, managed by a Latin American Consortium.

This type of laboratory is suited for experiments that require an ultra-low background from cosmic rays. We plan to host experiments in Particle and Astroparticle Physics, such as Neutrino and Dark Matter detection, in Geology and Geophysics, Seismology, Biology and to develop low background instrumentation, among other possibilities. In this talk we will present general features of the proposed Lab, the current status of the project and its opportunities for science.