Evidence for High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Neutrino Interactions

Reines, F.; Crouch, M. F.; Jenkins, T. L.; Kropp, W. R.; Gurr, H. S.; Smith, Gary R.; Sellschop, J.P.F.; Meyer, B. S.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.15.429

Cited by 134 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…This method was proposed to distinguish muons generated by atmospheric neutrinos from muons originating in the meson decays (5.1) in the atmosphere. There were two experiments, the Kolar Gold Field experiment in India [236] and an experiment in South Africa [237], reporting the first evidence for atmospheric muon neutrinos. Since these experiments could not distinguish up and down directions they used horizontal muons crossing the detector which lay, due to the great depth of the experimental sites, in the large zenith angle intervals 60…”

Section: Experiments With Atmospheric Neutrinosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenomenology of neutrino oscillations

Bilenky

Giunti

Grimus

1999

Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics

368

564

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This review is focused on neutrino mixing and neutrino oscillations in the light of the recent experimental developments. After discussing possible types of neutrino mixing for Dirac and Majorana neutrinos and considering in detail the phenomenology of neutrino oscillations in vacuum and matter, we review all existing evidence and indications in favour of neutrino oscillations that have been obtained in the atmospheric, solar and LSND experiments. We present the results of the analyses of the neutrino oscillation data in the framework of mixing of three and four massive neutrinos and investigate possibilities to test the different neutrino mass and mixing schemes obtained in this way. We also discuss briefly future neutrino oscillation experiments.

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Section: Experiments With Atmospheric Neutrinosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenomenology of neutrino oscillations

Bilenky

Giunti

Grimus

1999

Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics

368

564

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“…A next generation (megaton) scale nucleon decay instrument to probe lifetimes to 10 35 years would do wonders for advancing neutrino physics as well. Simply building a larger version of SuperK will not suffice because of the need for greater resolution as well as size.…”

Section: Fundamental Fermion Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The only candidate I see to go beyond SuperK is something like the AQUA-Rich style of imaging water Cherenkov detector [35,36]. An attractive alternative which need not be so massive to get to 10 35 years in kaon modes of nucleon decay, might be a 50 − 70 kiloton liquid argon detector of the ICARUS style. Perhaps such a detector can be realized in concert with a long baseline beam from a neutrino factory.…”

Section: Fundamental Fermion Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Atmospheric Neutrino Anomaly: Muon Neutrino Disappearance

Learned¹

2001

Current Aspects of Neutrino Physics

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“…The neutrinos produced in the earth's atmosphere as the result of the decay of cosmic-ray induced pions and kaons were first detected by experiments performed in the early 1960s. These experiments were located in the Kolar Gold Field in Southern India [21] and at the East Rand Proprietary mine in South Africa [22]. In the 1980s several large waterĈerenkov detectors were being used to search for proton decay.…”

Section: A Brief History Of Neutrinosmentioning

confidence: 99%

A study of muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations in the MINOS experiment

Yang

2009

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The observation of neutrino oscillations (neutrino changing from one flavor to another) has provided compelling evidence that the neutrinos have non-zero masses and that leptons mix, which is not part of the original Standard Model of particle physics. The theoretical framework that describes neutrino oscillation involves two mass scales (∆m 2 atm and ∆m 2 sol ), three mixing angles (θ 12 , θ 23 , and θ 13 ) and one CP violating phase (δ CP ). Both mass scales and two of the mixing angles (θ 12 and θ 23 ) have been measured by many neutrino experiments. The mixing angle θ 13 , which is believed to be very small, remains unknown. The current best limit on θ 13 comes from the CHOOZ experiment: θ 13 < 11• at 90% C.L. at the atmospheric mass scale. δ CP is also unknown today.MINOS, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, is a long baseline neutrino experiment based at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The experiment uses a muon neutrino beam, which is measured 1 km downstream from its origin in the Near Detector at Fermilab and then 735 km later in the Far Detector at the Soudan mine. By comparing these two measurements, MINOS can obtain parameters in the atmospheric sector of neutrino oscillations. MINOS has published results on the precise measurement of ∆m 2 atm and θ 23 through the disappearance of muon neutrinos in the Far Detector and on a search for sterile neutrinos by looking for a deficit in the number of neutral current interactions seen in the Far Detector. MINOS also has the potential to improve the limit on the neutrino mixing angle θ 13 or make the first v measurement of its value by searching for an electron neutrino appearance signal in the Far Detector. This is the focus of the study presented in this thesis.We developed a neural network based algorithm to distinguish the electron neutrino signal from background. The most important part of this measurement is the background estimation, which is done through extrapolation. The number of background events is measured at the Near Detector, then extrapolated to the Far Detector. Since different background sources extrapolate differently, some knowledge about the relative contribution from different background sources is necessary. We developed a method that can be used to obtain relative contributions of various background sources from comparison of background rates in the horn-on and horn-off configurations. We also described our effort to improve two aspects of the Monte Carlo simulation which are very important for the ν e appearance analysis: one is the hadronization model in the neutrino-nucleon interactions, the other is the modeling of PMT crosstalk. We performed a blind analysis and examined several sidebands before looking at the signal region. After we opened the box, we observed a 1.4 σ excess of ν e -like events in the Far Detector compared with the number of predicted background events. The excess is well within the statistical fluctuation of the background events. If we interpret the excess as a ν e signal from ν µ → ν...

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Evidence for High-Energy Cosmic-Ray Neutrino Interactions

Cited by 134 publications

References 5 publications

Phenomenology of neutrino oscillations

Phenomenology of neutrino oscillations

The Atmospheric Neutrino Anomaly: Muon Neutrino Disappearance

A study of muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations in the MINOS experiment

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