The NOvA Experiment

Abstract

NOvA is an off-axis long-baseline neutrino experiment, looking for ν e appearance in an upgraded NuMI beam of ν µ to precisely measure the recently discovered θ 13 acting in subdominant ν µ → ν e transitions. As an appearance experiment, NOvA might also be sensitive to CP-violating δ and the neutrino mass hierarchy. To maximize sensitivity to the resulting ∼GeV electromagnetic showers, the 14 kton Far Detector is "totally active", comprised of liquid scintillator contained in 15.7 m long extruded PVC cells, with the scintillation light piped out in wavelength shifting fibers then digitized by avalanche photodiodes. Both near and far detectors were fully completed last fall and have been taking ever more intense NuMI beam data. This talk will highlight progress towards the first NOvA results.

Exploring NSI degeneracies in long-baseline experiments

“…Most of the Standard Model parameters in the leptonic sector have been measured with high precision, including most of the mixing angles of the PMNS matrix [1][2][3][4] and the charged lepton masses [5]. It is expected that DUNE [6][7][8][9] and Hyper-Kamiokande [10,11] will accurately measure the CP violating phase, δ, if we restrict to the standard three neutrino oscillation picture. The measurement of absolute neutrino masses is another challenge, pursued by the Katrin experiment [12].…”