MINOS and NOvA: Howcroft, Newman, Ochoa, Peck, Trevor, Zheng

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MINOS and NOvAHowcroft, Newman, Ochoa, Peck,
Trevor, Zheng

• Faculty H. Newman C. Peck
• MINOS Atmospheric C. Howcroft n
  Analysis
• ne Analysis H. Zheng
  C.
  Howcroft
• Anti-Neutrino n-n P. Ochoa
  Oscillation Analysis C. Howcroft
• Barrier RF Stacking H. Zheng
• Veto Shield P. Ochoa
• NOnA RD J. Trevor
• C. Howcroft H. Zheng

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MINOSMain Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search

• Investigate atmospheric nm oscillations using
  intense, well-understood NuMI beam
• Two similar magnetized iron-scintillator
  calorimeters
• Near Detector
• 980 tons, 1 km from target, 90m deep
• Far Detector
• 5400 tons, 735 km away, 700 m deep

Veto Shield
Far Detector
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MINOS Physics Goals

• Confirm nm?nt flavor oscillations
• Provide high statistics discrimination against
  alternatives such as decoherence, n decay,
  etc.
• Precise (10) measurement of Dm223
• Search for subdominant nm?ne oscillations
• A shot at measuring q13
• Directly compare atmospheric n vs anti-n
  oscillations (a test of CPT)
• MINOS is the first large underground detector
  with a magnetic field for m/m- tagging

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MINOS
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MINOS Caltech History and Roles

• HISTORY MINOS at Caltech
• Original Detector Concept and Design Doug
  Michael
• Led Successful Optical Fiber RD 10 p.e. for
  a M.I.P A Key to the Data Quality
• Half of the scintillator modules were constructed
  at Caltech, in Lauritsen Lab
• ROLES
• Central Roles in Atmospheric Neutrino
  Analysis CHne Analysis Shower
  reconstruction ID HZ
• Proton Intensity RD Barrier RF Stacking HZ
  Digital Damping System for the 8 GeV Booster
  CH
• CR Veto Shield Rigorous Geometry, Timing
  Calibration, Alignment. Student Pedro
  Ochoa now the MINOS expert
• Co-Leadership, Active Development of NOnA
  Cell Design, Scintillator and Fiber TestsLight
  Output Optimization Software
  JT, CH, HZ

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MINOS Status

• The last 15 months have been a very exciting
  time for MINOS
• NuMI construction project completed successfully
  in January 2005
• Took 6kTon-years of Atmospheric, sign-separated
  data Tested CPT violation in neutrino
  interactions
• Have been taking physics beam data since March
  2005 We already collected 1020 protons on
  Target
• A relatively precise measurement of Dm223
  is about to be released
• Expect to reach the baseline design goal of
  7 X 1020 p.o.t. within the next couple of
  years

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Atmospheric Neutrino Results Howcroft
MINOS
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Antineutrino physics Ochoa

• Caltech work by Ochoa shows that a small amount
  of antineutrino running (3-4 months) would
  greatly improve our reach
• We are also interested in probing beyond the
  Standard Model physics, such as
  transitions With Howcroft
• At Caltech weve shown that if these occur at the
  10 level or more, then we should be able to
  observe them in MINOS.

MINOS allowed region in
assuming CPT conservation
?
allowed region
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Proton Intensity andBarrier RF Stacking RD
Zheng

• Doug Michael originated and led the conceptual
  development of the FNAL proton intensity program
• Part of Caltech's involvement, in collaboration
  with Fermilab Beam Division, is Barrier RF
  Stacking Utilizes HV pulses as barriers to
  stack squeeze the beam
• Barrier RF Stacking on-momentum injection study
  has made a lot of progress over the year
• Successfully stacked two Booster batches and
  reached 8.3e12 at 120 GeV (60 Increase)
• Barrier RF Stacking off-momentum injection study
  demonstrates stacking is possible even with one
  barrier
• Hardware system for 2nd barrier has been
  assembled cavity is scheduled to be installed
  detailed study will follow
• A new modulator is being assembled with high duty
  factor of NUMI/MINOS in mind

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The NO?A Detector

• 30 kton, off-axis, totally active detector,
  sensitive to Sin2q13 down to 0.01 (20X better
  than current limit)
• RD ramping up moving towards construction
• Our group has a leading role in the design
  development
• Our experience with MINOS fabrication is
  invaluable

132 m
15.7 m
762k Cells in 1984 planes Alternating X Y
views 12 Extruded PVC Modules per plane32
Individual cells per Module
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NOnA RD at Caltech

• Our group is performing measurements to
  understand the performance of the individual
  components of the NOnA detector Trevor
• Extruded PVC Modules
• Liquid scintillator
• Wavelength shifting fiber
• Our group also is building the software
  framework, and will participate in the
  development of NO?A detector simulation event
  reconstruction software
• Photon production and propagation simulation
  software based on detector RD measurements done
  locally Howcroft
• Development of NOvA event reconstruction software
  
  Zheng

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Extra Slides Follow
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MINOS and NOnA Reconstruction and Analysis

• Caltech has made the main contribution to MINOS
  improved shower reconstruction and event-by-event
  ID. Substantial effort has been directed towards
  different aspects of ne analysis
• SubShower and Shower packages have become the
  MINOS standard reconstruction
• ne discriminants based on SubShower info. have
  been developed and adopted in different analyses.
  Cut-based and NN analyses using SubShower info.
  are in the making. On-going rejection and
  estimation of cosmic background is part of ne
  analysis effort
• Caltech will develop photon production and
  propagation simulation software for NOnA based on
  the results from the Caltech scintillator RD.
  Possibility of adapting SubShower idea for NOnA
  reconstruction will be investigated.

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Veto Shield and Future Atmospheric Neutrino
Studies

• Caltech has been looking at ways to improve the
  current atmospheric neutrino selection
• Upward going events carry a lot of information
  about oscillations as is evident from the recent
  analysis
• Current upward going selection is based on
  hit-timing along the track
• Additional information may come from timing of
  veto shield hits, improving the 1/b resoln, and
  resolving some Up-Down ambiguities for PC events
• Ochoas precise veto shield
  time-calibration is a key step

Veto shield hit
Gradient 1/particle velocity
t/s
Hits along track
distance along track
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Antineutrino physics

• Caltech has been looking at the physics we can do
  with antineutrinos in MINOS.
• Directly measuring the antineutrino oscillation
  parameters is a probe of CPT conservation

Neutrinos Antineutrinos
About 10 of our neutrino beam is made of
antineutrinos
MINOS can exclude or confirm a considerable part
of the parameter
space for antineutrinoswith 3 years of data
(plot assumes CPT conservation holds)
Excluded region
?
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Caius Howcroft

• NOnA using results of in-house NOnA scintillator
  RD to create a Monte Carlo simulation of light
  output in the completed NOvA detectors
• MINOS
• Central involvement in the group looking for ne
  appearance in the nµ beam. In particular the
  modelling of Neutral Current backgrounds.
• Atmospheric neutrinos - using the MINOS far
  detector to test CPT invariance for neutrinos.
• DAQ - continued development and support of the
  MINOS DAQ system.
• nubar - Looking for appearance in the beam and
  research into future anti-neutrino running.

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Jason Trevor

• NO?A detector RD with Hai Zheng and Caius
  Howcroft
• Testing of the various NO?A -type extrusions in
  order to establish a relationship between light
  yield and the reflectivity of the extrusion cell
  walls.
• Testing of various formulations of mineral oil
  based liquid scintillator in order to
  establishing a relationship between light yield,
  the attenuation length of the mineral oil and the
  pseudocumene content of the scintillator.
• Perform light yield measurements for a minimum
  ionizing muon passing through a baseline NO?A
  cell near the U-bend in a full length (33m) WLS
  fiber loop.
• Prototyping Next-Generation Megaton Detectors
• Design, construction and testing of a hybrid
  water/plastic scintillator detector prototype.

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NOnA Liquid Scintillator System

• Each cell is an extruded TiO2 loaded PVC tube
  with ID 6cm thick x 3.9cm wide x 15.7m long.
• Cells are filled with a mineral oil scintillator
  which is read out at one end with a U-loop WLS
  fiber running to a multi-pixel APD.
• Kuraray 0.8 mm WLS Fiber
• Light output requirement is determined by the
  achievable noise on the APD amplifier. The
  current estimate for the minimum required LO is
  25 photo-electrons.

0.8mm WLS Fiber
One Cell