Abstract

The OPERA experiment was designed to study muon neutrino to tau neutrino oscillations in appearance mode, using the CERN to Gran Sasso (CNGS) high energy neutrino beam 730 km far from the source. From 2008 to 2012, CNGS neutrinos interactions were recorded in the OPERA detector, which includes target units made of lead plates alternated with emulsion films and electronic tracker planes. The on-going analysis is aimed at the detection of short-lived particle decays occurring over distances of the order of 1 mm from the neutrino interaction point. It has allowed identifying charmed hadrons together with the tau lepton decay candidates that have established vμ → vτ oscillations with a significance of 4.2 σ. The procedure applied in OPERA to detect short-lived particle decays and its application to the search for charmed hadrons will be discussed here in detail.

Highlights

  • Every wall is filled with target elementary constituents, the so-called lead/emulsion “bricks” and all are followed by two planes of plastic scintillator strips, one per transverse direction, called Target Trackers (TT)

  • Each spectrometer consists of a dipolar magnet instrumented with planes of Resistive Plate Chambers (Inner Tracker) and drift tubes (Precision Tracker) detectors in order to identify muons mainly coming from νμCC interactions and measure their momentum and charge

  • The direct observation of short-lived particle decays is a crucial task in the Oscillation Project with Emulsion tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) neutrino oscillation experiment

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Summary

Introduction

EPJ Web of Conferences search for charmed hadrons in the full data sample of CC events collected in 2008 and 2009 runs as well as in a subsample of the statistics collected in the 2010 run. Charmed hadrons have masses and lifetimes similar to those of the τ lepton and their detection is a powerful tool in order to validate the procedure for the detection of ντ appearance

OPERA detector and event analysis
Search for short-lived particle decays
The extra-track and in-track searches
Charmed hadrons search
Findings
Conclusions

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