Abstract
A new event reconstruction algorithm based on a maximum likelihood method has been developed for Super-Kamiokande. Its improved kinematic and particle identification capabilities enable the ...analysis of atmospheric neutrino data in a detector volume 32% larger than previous analyses and increase the sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy. Analysis of a 253.9 kton$\cdot$year exposure of the Super-Kamiokande IV atmospheric neutrino data has yielded a weak preference for the normal hierarchy, disfavoring the inverted hierarchy at 74% assuming oscillations at the best fit of the analysis.
An upgrade of the Near Detector of the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, ND280, has been proposed. This upgrade will include two new Time Projection Chambers, each equipped with 16 ...resistive Micromegas modules for gas amplification. A first prototype of resistive Micromegas has been designed, built, installed in the HARP field cage, and exposed to a beam of charged particles at CERN. The data have been used to characterize the performances of the resistive Micromegas module. A spatial resolution of 300 μm and a deposited energy resolution of 9% were observed for horizontal electrons crossing the TPCs at 30 cm from the anode. Such performances fully satisfy the requirements for the upgrade of the ND280 TPC.
Muon neutrino and antineutrino disappearance probabilities are identical in the standard three-flavor neutrino oscillation framework, but CPT violation and nonstandard interactions can violate this ...symmetry. In this work we report the measurements of sin2θ23 and Δ$m$$^{2}_{32}$ independently for neutrinos and antineutrinos. The aforementioned symmetry violation would manifest as an inconsistency in the neutrino and antineutrino oscillation parameters. The analysis discussed here uses a total of 1.97 × 1021 and 1.63 × 1021 protons on target taken with a neutrino and antineutrino beam respectively, and benefits from improved flux and cross section models, new near-detector samples and more than double the data reducing the overall uncertainty of the result. No significant deviation is observed, consistent with the standard neutrino oscillation picture.
Neutral current (NC) interactions of atmospheric neutrinos on oxygen form one of the major backgrounds in the search for supernova relic neutrinos with water-based Cherenkov detectors. The NC channel ...is dominated by neutrino quasielastic (NCQE) scattering off nucleons inside O16 nuclei. In this paper we report the first measurement of NCQE cross section using atmospheric neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande (SK). The measurement used 2,778 live days of SK-IV data with a fiducial volume of 22.5 kiloton water. Within the visible energy window of 7.5–29.5 MeV, we observed 117 events compared to the expected 71.9 NCQE signal and 53.1 background events. Weighted by the atmospheric neutrino spectrum from 160 MeV to 10 GeV, the flux averaged NCQE cross section is measured to be (1.01±0.17(stat.)−0.30+0.78(sys.))×10−38 cm2.
Electron antineutrino appearance is measured by the T2K experiment in an accelerator-produced antineutrino beam, using additional neutrino beam operation to constrain parameters of the ...Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) mixing matrix. T2K observes 15 candidate electron antineutrino events with a background expectation of 9.3 events. Including information from the kinematic distribution of observed events, the hypothesis of no electron antineutrino appearance is disfavored with a significance of 2.40σ and no discrepancy between data and PMNS predictions is found. A complementary analysis that introduces an additional free parameter which allows non-PMNS values of electron neutrino and antineutrino appearance also finds no discrepancy between data and PMNS predictions.
Due to a very low production rate of electron anti-neutrinos (ν̄e) via nuclear fusion in the Sun, a flux of solar ν̄e is unexpected. An appearance of ν̄e in solar neutrino flux opens a new window for ...the new physics beyond the standard model. In particular, a spin-flavor precession process is expected to convert an electron neutrino into an electron anti-neutrino (νe→ν̄e) when neutrino has a finite magnetic moment. In this work, we have searched for solar ν̄e in the Super-Kamiokande experiment, using neutron tagging to identify their inverse beta decay signature. We identified 78 ν̄e candidates for neutrino energies of 9.3 to 17.3 MeV in 2970.1 live days with a fiducial volume of 22.5 kiloton water (183.0 kton⋅year exposure). The energy spectrum has been consistent with background predictions and we thus derived a 90% confidence level upper limit of 4.7×10−4 on the νe→ν̄e conversion probability in the Sun. We used this result to evaluate the sensitivity of future experiments, notably the Super-Kamiokande Gadolinium (SK-Gd) upgrade.
A search for proton decay into three charged leptons has been performed by using 0.37 Mton ⋅ years of data collected in Super-Kamiokande. All possible combinations of electrons, muons, and their ...antiparticles consistent with charge conservation were considered as decay modes. No significant excess of events has been found over the background, and lower limits on the proton lifetime divided by the branching ratio have been obtained. The limits range between 9.2 × 1033 and 3.4 × 1034 years at 90% confidence level, improving by more than an order of magnitude upon limits from previous experiments. A first limit has been set for the p → μ−e+e+ mode.
In this paper we describe the performance of a prototype of the High Angle Time Projection Chambers (HA-TPCs) that are being produced for the Near Detector (ND280) upgrade of the T2K experiment. The ...two HA-TPCs of ND280 will be instrumented with eight Encapsulated Resistive Anode Micromegas (ERAM) on each endplate, for a total of 32 ERAMs. This innovative technique allows the detection of the charge emitted by ionization electrons over several pads, improving the determination of the track position.
The TPC prototype has been equipped with the first ERAM module produced for T2K and with the HA-TPC readout electronics chain and it has been exposed to an electron beam at DESY in order to measure spatial and dE/dx resolution. In this paper we characterize the performances of the ERAM and, for the first time, we compare them with a newly developed simulation of the detector response.
Spatial resolution better than 800 μm and dE/dx resolution better than 10% are observed for all the incident angles and for all the drift distances of interest. All the main features of the data are correctly reproduced by the simulation and these performances fully fulfill the requirements for the HA-TPCs of T2K.
PDF
