The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment uses an acceleratorproduced neutrino beam to perform precision measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters in the "atmospheric neutrino" sector associated with muon neutrino disappearance. This long-baseline experiment measures neutrino interactions in Fermilab's NuMI neutrino beam with a near detector at Fermilab and again 735 km downstream with a far detector in the Soudan Underground Laboratory in northern Minnesota. The two detectors are magnetized steel-scintillator tracking calorimeters. They are designed to be as similar as possible in order to ensure that differences in detector response have minimal impact on the comparisons of event rates, energy spectra and topologies that are essential to MINOS measurements of oscillation parameters. The design, construction, calibration and performance of the far and near detectors are described in this paper.

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This Letter reports new results from the MINOS experiment based on a two-year exposure to muon neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. Our data are consistent with quantum-mechanical oscillations of neutrino flavor with mass splitting |Deltam2| = (2.43+/-0.13) x 10(-3) eV2 (68% C.L.) and mixing angle sin2(2theta) > 0.90 (90% C.L.). Our data disfavor two alternative explanations for the disappearance of neutrinos in flight: namely, neutrino decays into lighter particles and quantum decoherence of neutrinos, at the 3.7 and 5.7 standard-deviation levels, respectively.

2016-12-23T18:47:23

An additional significant digit is added to the reported experimental measurements in Eqs. (6) -(8) on pages 091802-3. The results with the inclusion of additional precision are sin 2 on-shell W 0:227 73 0:001 35stat 0:000 93syst ÿ 0:000 22 M 2 top ÿ 175 GeV 2 50 GeV 2 0:000 32 ln M Higgs 150 GeV ; (6) 0 0:997 89 0:004 05; sin 2 W 0:226 47 0:003 11;g eff L 2 0:300 05 0:001 37; g eff R 2 0:030 76 0:001 10:The above measurements for g eff L 2 and g eff R 2 are different from those originally reported due to a mistake related to the assumed reference values for M top and M Higgs .The small correlation coefficient for the two parameter g eff L 2 ÿ g eff R 2 fit is now explicitly stated; it is ÿ0:017.