Preliminary Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation Parameters By NuMI/MINOS and Calibration Studies for Improving this Measurement

Abstract

This thesis explains the origins of neutrinos and their interactions, and the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations. Experiments for measuring neutrino oscillations are mentioned and the experiment investigated in this thesis, the ''Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search'', and its neutrino beam, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's ''Neutrinos At The Main Injector'', are described. MINOS is a long baseline (735 km) neutrino oscillation experiment with a near and a far detector, intended to make precision measurements of the atmospheric sector neutrino oscillation parameters. A measurement is made of the ''atmospheric'' neutrino oscillation parameters, Δm$2\atop{23}$ and sin2(2θ23), using neutrinos from the NuMI beam. The results of this analysis are compared to measurements at MINOS using neutrinos from the atmosphere and with other experiments. A more detailed method of beam neutrino analysis is discussed, and the extra calibrations needed to perform that analysis properly are described, with special attention paid to two aspects of the calibration, which comprise the bulk of work for this thesis. The light injection calibration system uses LEDs to illuminate the detector readout and provides a normalization of the stability of the detector over time. The hardware and different modi operandi of the system are described. There is a description of installation and commissioning of the system at one of the MINOS detectors. The response normalization of each detector with cosmic ray muons is described. Special attention is paid to the explanation of necessary corrections that must be made to the muon sample in order for the sample to be used to calibrate each detector to the specified accuracy. The performance of the calibration is shown.