Observed since the 1950s, the seasonal effect on underground muons is a well studied phenomenon. The interaction height of incident cosmic rays changes as the temperature of the atmosphere changes, ...which affects the production height of mesons (mostly pions and kaons). The decay of these mesons produces muons that can be detected underground. The production of muons is dominated by pion decay, and previous work did not include the effect of kaons. In this work, the methods of Barrett and MACRO are extended to include the effect of kaons. These efforts give rise to a new method to measure the atmospheric
K
/
π
ratio at energies beyond the reach of current fixed target experiments. These methods were applied to data from the MINOS far detector. A method is developed for making these measurements at other underground detectors, including OPERA, Super-K, IceCube, Baksan and the MINOS near detector.
The NOvA experiment uses a GPS based timing system both to internally synchronize the readout of the DAQ components and to establish an absolute wall clock reference which can be used to link the ...Fermilab accelerator complex with the neutrino flux that crosses the NOvA detectors. We describe the methods that were used during the commissioning of the NOvA DAQ and Timing systems to establish the synchronization between the Fermilab beam and the NOvA far detector. We present how high precision atomic clocks were trained and transported between the MINOS and NOvA detectors during a Northern Minnesota blizzard to validate the absolute time offsets of the experiments and make the first observation of beam neutrinos in the NOvA far detector.
The NOvA experiment uses a continuous, free-running, dead-timeless data acquisition system to collect data from the 14 kT far detector. The DAQ system readouts the more than 344,000 detector channels ...and assembles the information into an raw unfiltered high bandwidth data stream. The NOvA trigger systems operate in parallel to the readout and asynchronously to the primary DAQ readout event building chain. The data driven triggering systems for NOvA are unique in that they examine long contiguous time windows of the high resolution readout data and enable the detector to be sensitive to a wide range of physics interactions from those with fast, nanosecond scale signals up to processes with long delayed coincidences between hits which occur at the tens of milliseconds time scale. The trigger system is able to achieve a true 100% live time for the detector, making it sensitive to both beam spill related and off-spill physics.
We present updated results from the NOvA experiment for νμ→νμ and νμ→νe oscillations from an exposure of 8.85×1020 protons on target, which represents an increase of 46% compared to our previous ...publication. The results utilize significant improvements in both the simulations and analysis of the data. A joint fit to the data for νμ disappearance and νe appearance gives the best-fit point as normal mass hierarchy, Δm322=2.44×10−3 eV2/c4, sin2θ23=0.56, and δCP=1.21π. The 68.3% confidence intervals in the normal mass hierarchy are Δm322∈2.37,2.52×10−3 eV2/c4, sin2θ23∈0.43,0.51∪0.52,0.60, and δCP∈0,0.12π∪0.91π,2π. The inverted mass hierarchy is disfavored at the 95% confidence level for all choices of the other oscillation parameters.
We report the final measurement of the neutrino oscillation parameters Δm322 and sin2 θ23 using all data from the MINOS and MINOS+ experiments. These data were collected using a total exposure of ...23.76 × 1020 protons on target producing νμ and νμ beams and 60.75 kt yr exposure to atmospheric neutrinos. The measurement of the disappearance of νμ and the appearance of νe events between the Near and Far detectors yields ... and ... at 68% C.L. for normal (inverted) hierarchy. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omited.).
Charged-current antineutrino interactions on a hydrocarbon scintillator in the MINERvA detector are used to study activity from their final-state neutrons. To ensure that most of the neutrons are ...from the primary interaction, rather than hadronic reinteractions in the detector, the sample is limited to momentum transfers below 0.8 GeV/c. From 16 129 interactions, 15 246 neutral particle candidates are observed. The reference simulation predicts 64% of these candidates are due to neutrons from the antineutrino interaction directly but also overpredicts the number of candidates by 15% overall. This discrepancy is beyond the standard uncertainty estimates for models of neutrino interactions and neutron propagation in the detector. We explore these two aspects of the models using the measured distributions for energy deposition, time of flight, position, and speed. We also use multiplicity distributions to evaluate the presence of a two-nucleon knockout process. These results provide critical new information toward a complete description of the hadronic final state of neutrino interactions, which is vital to neutrino oscillation experiments.
The Helium and Lead Observatory (HALO) is a supernova neutrino detector under development for construction at SNOLAB. It is intended to fulfill a niche as a long term, low cost, high livetime, and ...low maintenance, dedicated supernova detector. It will be constructed from 80 tonnes of lead, from the decommissioning of the Deep River Cosmic Ray Station, and instrumented with approximately 384 meters of 3He neutron detectors from the final phase of the SNO experiment. Charged- and Neutral-Current neutrino interactions in lead expel neutrons from the lead nuclei making a burst of detected neutrons the signature for the detection of a supernova. Existing neutrino detectors are mostly of the water Cerenkov and liquid scintillator types, which are primarily sensitive to electron anti-neutrinos via charged-current interactions on the hydrogen nuclei in these materials. By contrast, the large neutron excess of a heavy nucleus like Pb acts to Pauli-block p⟩n transitions induced by electron anti-neutrinos, making HALO primarily sensitive to electron neutrinos. While any supernova neutrino data would provide an invaluable window into supernova dynamics, the electron neutrino CC channel has interesting sensitivity to particle physics through flavour-swapping and spectral splitting due to MSW-like collective neutrino-neutrino interactions in the core of the supernova, the only place in the universe where there is a sufficient density of neutrinos for this to occur. Such data could provide a test for θ13 ≠ 0 and an inverted neutrino mass hierarchy. In addition, the ratio of 1-neutron to 2-neutron events would be a measure of the temperature of the cooling neutron star. For the 80 tonne detector, a supernova at 10 kpc is estimated to produce 43 detected neutrons in the absence of collective ν-ν interactions, and many more in their presence. The high neutrino cross-section and low neutron absorption cross-section of lead, along with the modest cost of lead, makes this technology scalable and a future upgrade, to of order 1 kilotonne, is under active consideration.
SNEWS: the SuperNova Early Warning System Antonioli, Pietro; Fienberg, Richard Tresch; Fleurot, Fabrice ...
New journal of physics,
09/2004, Letnik:
6
Journal Article
PDF
