Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Sterman, George | Jung, Chang Kee | Weinacht, Thomas | Paolone, Vittorio.

Date

2012-05-01

Keywords

Particle physics

Department

Department of Physics

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71326

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

The T2K experiment is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment designed for the primary goal of measuring &nu&mu \rarr &nue oscillation, thereby providing a measurement of the neutrino mixing angle &theta13. To achieve this goal, a beam of muon neutrinos is produced at the Japanese Proton Accelerator Research Complex in Tokai, Japan and sent 295 kilometers across Japan towards the Super-Kamiokande detector. One of the major backgrounds of the &nue appearance measurement is from neutral current &nu&mu interactions where a single &pi0 is produced and the photons from the &pi0 decay mimic the &nue appearance signal. To constrain the uncertainty on this background, a &pi0-detector has been constructed as part of the T2K near detector facility at 280 meters from the proton beam target. This dissertation presents a measurement of the neutral current single &pi0 (NC1&pi0) production cross section using 8.55×1019 protons-on-target (POT) of T2K data. This is achieved by using pre-defined selection criteria to enhance the NC1&pi0 signal events over background events in the invariant mass distribution of NC1&pi0 candidate events. An extended likelihood fit is then performed on the data distribution to extract the number of signal events. We measure the ratio of the NC1&pi0 production cross section normalized by the &nu&mu Charged-Current Inclusive interaction to be 0.81 ± 0.15 (stat) ± 0.14 (sys). | 134 pages

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.