Actions for Electron Neutrino Appearance in the MINOS Experiment [electronic resource].

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Electron Neutrino Appearance in the MINOS Experiment [electronic resource].

Published
Washington, D.C. : United States. Dept. of Energy, 2010.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. : Distributed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Physical Description
229 pages : digital, PDF file
Additional Creators
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, United States. Department of Energy, and United States. Department of Energy. Office of Scientific and Technical Information
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Summary
The MINOS experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment which sends a high intensity muon neutrino beam through two functionally identical detectors, a Near detector at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, 1km from the beam source, and a Far detector, 734km away, in the Soudan Mine in Minnesota. MINOS may be able to measure the neutrino mixing angle parameter sin² 2θ₁₃ for the first time. Detector granularity, however, makes it very hard to distinguish any ν{sub e} appearance signal events characteristic of a non-zero value of θ₁₃ from background neutral current (NC) and short-track ν{sub μ} charged current (CC) events. Also, uncertainties in the hadronic shower modeling in the kinematic region characteristic of this analysis are relatively large. A new data-driven background decomposition method designed to address those issues is developed and its results presented. By removing the long muon tracks from ν{sub μ}-CC events, the Muon Removed Charge Current (MRCC) method creates independent pseudo-NC samples that can be used to correct the MINOS Monte Carlo to agree with the high-statistics Near detector data and to decompose the latter into components so as to predict the expected Far detector background. The MRCC method also provides an important cross-check in the Far detector to test the background in the signal selected region. MINOS finds a 1.0-1.5 σ ν{sub e}-CC excess above background in the Far detector data, depending on method used, for a total exposure of 3.14 x 10²° protons-on-target. Interpreting this excess as signal, MINOS can set limits on sin² 2θ₁₃. Using the MRCC method, MINOS sets a limit of sin² 2θ₁₃ < 0.265 at the 90% confidence limit for a CP-violating phase δ = 0.
Report Numbers
E 1.99:fermilab-thesis-2010-41
fermilab-thesis-2010-41
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Note
Published through SciTech Connect.
06/01/2010.
"fermilab-thesis-2010-41"
Holin, Anna Maria.
Funding Information
AC02-07CH11359
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