Neutrino Beam Research Articles

Recent T2K Neutrino Oscillation Results

T2K is a long baseline neutrino experiment producing a beam of muon neutrinos at the Japan Particle Accelerator Research Centre on the East coast of Japan and measuring their oscillated state 295 km away at the Super Kamiokande detector. Since, 2017 T2K has doubled its data in both neutrino and anti-neutrino beam modes. Coupled with improvements in analysis techniques, this has enabled the experiment to make world-leading measurements of the PMNS oscillation parameters , sin2(θ 23) and the CP violating phase δCP . In particular, the CP conserving values of δCP now appear to be disfavoured at the 95% CL and there are regions of parameter space excluded at the 99.7% CL. This talk will describe these results and the analysis improvements that have enabled them.

Basic studies of 3-inch PMT for multi-PMT development

Hyper-Kamiokande is the next generation large-scale water Cherenkov detector. In Hyper-Kamiokade and Intermediate Water Cherenkov Detector for its long baseline project with J-PARC neutrino beam, use of multi-PMT, which is made by combination of 3-inch PMTs, is being considered. As part of multi-PMT development, we measured the characteristics of the 3-inch PMT including the temperature dependence of dark noise rate. The dark noise rate is important characteristic for detection of low energy events including neutron tagging. In addition, since PMT is generally susceptible to the magnetic field, we confirmed the photon detection efficiency in the condition where the magnetic field was applied.

Neutrino CP Violation with the European Spallation Source neutrino Super Beam project

After measuring in 2012 a relatively large value of the neutrino mixing angle θ 13, the door is now open to observe for the first time a possible CP violation in the leptonic sector. The measured value of θ 13 also privileges the 2nd oscillation maximum for the discovery of CP violation instead of the usually used 1st oscillation maximum. The sensitivity at this 2nd oscillation maximum is about three times higher than for the 1st oscillation maximum inducing a lower influence of systematic errors. Going to the 2nd oscillation maximum necessitates a very intense neutrino beam with the appropriate energy. The world’s most intense pulsed spallation neutron source, the European Spallation Source (ESS), will have a proton linac with 5 MW power and 2 GeV energy. This linac, under construction, also has the potential to become the proton driver of the world’s most intense neutrino beam with very high potential to discover a neutrino CP violation. The physics performance of that neutrino Super Beam in conjunction with a megaton underground Water Cherenkov neutrino detector installed at a distance of about 500 km from ESS has been evaluated. In addition, the choice of such detector will extent the physics program to proton–decay, atmospheric neutrinos and astrophysics searches. The ESS proton linac upgrades, the accumulator ring needed for proton pulse compression, the target station optimization and the physics potential are described. In addition to neutrinos, this facility will also produce at the same time a copious number of muons which could be used by a muon collider. The ESS neutron facility will be fully ready by 2023 at which moment the upgrades for the neutrino facility could start.

ANNIE: Neutron multiplicity in neutrino interactions and new technologies

The Accelerator Neutrino Neutron Interaction Experiment (ANNIE) aims at measuring the neutron abundance in the final state of neutrino-nucleus interactions. This measurement will have a direct impact on our understanding of neutrino interactions and will lead to a better reduction of systematic errors and an improvement of signal-background discrimination in future large neutrino detectors, thus impacting long baseline oscillation experiments as well as proton decay searches and supernova detection. With a volume of about 26 tons of pure water doped with gadolinium to enhance neutron tagging efficiency, ANNIE will provide a measurement of the neutron yield of neutrino interactions as a function of the neutrino energy in the well-characterized Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. The modularity of ANNIE will allow it to perform several fundamental tests of new technologies to be used in neutrino detectors, such as a novel kind of photodetectors called Large Area Picosecond Photodetectors and Water-based Liquid Scintillator, a newly-developed detection medium. The technology behind the ANNIE detector will have a noticeable impact on the development of future large water Cherenkov detectors as well as on detection techniques for neutrino physics.

Measurement of the muon neutrino charged-current single π+ production on hydrocarbon using the T2K off-axis near detector ND280

We report the measurements of the single and double differential cross section of muon neutrino charged-current interactions on carbon with a single positively charged pion in the final state at the T2K off-axis near detector using 5.56×1020 protons on target. The analysis uses data control samples for the background subtraction and the cross section signal, defined as a single negatively charged muon and a single positively charged pion exiting from the target nucleus, is extracted using an unfolding method. The model-dependent cross section, integrated over the T2K off-axis neutrino beam spectrum peaking at 0.6 GeV, is measured to be σ=(11.76±0.44(stat)±2.39(syst))×10−40 cm2 nucleon−1. Various differential cross sections are measured, including the first measurement of the Adler angles for single charged pion production in neutrino interactions with heavy nuclei target.11 MoreReceived 11 September 2019Revised 12 December 2019DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.101.012007Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasParticle interactionsParticles & Fields

Study of a tri-direct littlest seesaw model at MOMENT

The flavour symmetry succeeds in explaining the current global fit results. Flavour-symmetry models can be tested by the future experiments that improve the precision of neutrino oscillation parameters, such as the MuOn-decay MEdium baseline NeuTrino beam experiment (MOMENT). In this work, we consider tri-direct littlest seesaw (TDLS) models for a case study, and analyze how much MOMENT can extend our knowledge on the TDLS model. We find that measurements of θ23 and δ are crucial for MOMENT to exclude the model at more than 5σ confidence level, if the best fit values in the last global analysis result is confirmed. Moreover, the 3σ precision of model parameters can be improved at MOMENT by at least a factor of two. Finally, we project the surface at the 3σ confidence level from the model-parameter space to the oscillation-parameter space, and find the potential of MOMENT to observe the sum rule between θ23 and δ predicted by TDLS.

Polysiloxane-based scintillators for shashlik calorimeters

We present the first application of polysiloxane-based scintillators as active medium in a shashlik sampling calorimeter. These results were obtained from a testbeam campaign of a ∼6×6×45 cm3 (13 X0 depth) prototype. A Wavelength Shifting fiber array of 36 elements runs perpendicularly to the stack of iron (15 mm) and polysiloxane scintillator (15 mm) tiles with a density of about one over cm2. Unlike shashlik calorimeters based on plastic organic scintillators, here fibers are optically matched with the scintillator without any intermediate air gap. The prototype features a compact light readout based on Silicon Photo-Multipliers embedded in the bulk of the detector. The detector was tested with electrons, pions and muons with energies ranging from 1 to 7 GeV at the CERN-PS. This solution offers a highly radiation hard detector to instrument the decay region of a neutrino beam, providing an event-by-event measurement of high-angle decay products associated with neutrino production (ENUBET, Enhanced NeUtrino BEams from kaon Tagging, ERC project). The results in terms of light yield, uniformity and energy resolution, are compared to a similar calorimeter built with ordinary plastic scintillators.

Charged lepton beams as a source of effective neutrinos

Neutrinos are likely the most poorly understood basic constituents of the Standard Model. In order to investigate precisely their interactions one should be able to create high-intensity and well-collimated neutrino beams with known flavor compositions. This is a challenging problem for neutrino experiments. We propose a method of studying neutrino interactions based on the fact that a charged lepton is able to manifest itself effectively, with a certain probability, as a neutrino. The effective neutrino method may provide an additional tool for probing neutrino-induced reactions at and ep colliders as well as at other facilities that use charged lepton beams. We derive the distributions of the effective neutrinos in the charged leptons and give examples of application of the method to electron-positron collisions.

Latest oscillation results from T2K

T2K is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment built to measure νμ disappearance and νe appearance using the J-PARC neutrino beam and the Super-Kamiokande detector. Presented here are the first results in the search for CP violation in neutrino oscillations with a combined analysis of appearance and disappearance channels using data from both neutrino- and antineutrino-mode beams. The data included in this analysis comprises 7.48×1020 protons on target in neutrino mode, giving 37 electron-like and 135 muon-like events at the far detector, and 7.47 × 1020 protons on target in antineutrino mode, giving 4 electron-like and 66 muon-like events. Including a constraint on sin2(2θ13) from reactor measurements, the 90% confidence interval for δCP spans the range [-2.95, -0.44] for the normal mass hierarchy.

The Hyper-K Near Detector Programme

The proposed Hyper-Kamiokande experiment (Hyper-K) is a next generation large water Cherenkov (WC) detector with a broad physics program consisting of neutrino beam measurements in search of leptonic CP violation, astrophysical measurements and a search for proton decay. Hyper-K will act as the far detector to measure the oscillated neutrino flux from the long-baseline beam of 0.6 GeV neutrinos/anti-neutrinos produced by a 1.3 MW proton beam at J-PARC in Japan. To minimise systematic uncertainties, particularly due to flux and cross-section uncertainties, detailed measurements of the unoscillated flux are required with a suite of near detectors. We review the challenges, and present the planned components of the near detector measurement suite, including a new intermediate Water Cherenkov Detector.

Measurement of neutrino and antineutrino neutral-current quasielasticlike interactions on oxygen by detecting nuclear deexcitation γ rays

Neutrino- and antineutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielastic-like interactions are measured at Super-Kamiokande using nuclear de-excitation $\gamma$-rays to identify signal-like interactions in data from a $14.94 \ (16.35)\times 10^{20}$ protons-on-target exposure of the T2K neutrino (antineutrino) beam. The measured flux-averaged cross sections on oxygen nuclei are $\langle \sigma_{\nu {\rm -NCQE}} \rangle = 1.70 \pm 0.17 ({\rm stat.}) ^{+ {\rm 0.51}}_{- {\rm 0.38}} ({\rm syst.}) \times 10^{-38} \ {\rm cm^2/oxygen}$ with a flux-averaged energy of 0.82 GeV and $\langle \sigma_{\bar{\nu} {\rm -NCQE}} \rangle = 0.98 \pm 0.16 ({\rm stat.}) ^{+ {\rm 0.26}}_{- {\rm 0.19}} ({\rm syst.}) \times 10^{-38} \ {\rm cm^2/oxygen}$ with a flux-averaged energy of 0.68 GeV, for neutrinos and antineutrinos, respectively. These results are the most precise to date, and the antineutrino result is the first cross section measurement of this channel. They are compared with various theoretical predictions. The impact on evaluation of backgrounds to searches for supernova relic neutrinos at present and future water Cherenkov detectors is also discussed.

Measurements of hadron production in π++C and π++Be interactions at 60 GeV/c

Precise knowledge of hadron production rates in the generation of neutrino beams is necessary for accelerator-based neutrino experiments to achieve their physics goals. NA61/SHINE, a large-acceptance hadron spectrometer, has recorded hadron+nucleus interactions relevant to ongoing and future long-baseline neutrino experiments at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This paper presents three analyses of interactions of 60 GeV/$c$ $\pi^+$ with thin, fixed carbon and beryllium targets. Integrated production and inelastic cross sections were measured for both of these reactions. In an analysis of strange, neutral hadron production, differential production multiplicities of $K^0_{S}$, $\Lambda$ and anti-$\Lambda$ were measured. Lastly, in an analysis of charged hadron production, differential production multiplicities of $\pi^+$, $\pi^-$, $K^+$, $K^-$ and protons were measured. These measurements will enable long-baseline neutrino experiments to better constrain predictions of their neutrino flux in order to achieve better precision on their neutrino cross section and oscillation measurements.

Open-source QCD analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions at NLO and NNLO

We present new sets of nuclear parton distribution functions (nPDFs) at next-to-leading order (NLO) and next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO). Our analyses are based on deeply inelastic scattering data with charged-lepton and neutrino beams on nuclear targets. In addition, a set of proton baseline PDFs is fitted within the same framework with the same theoretical assumptions. The results of this global QCD analysis are compared to existing nPDF sets and to the fitted cross sections. Also, the uncertainties resulting from the limited constraining power of the included experimental data are presented. The published work is based on an open-source tool, xFitter, which has been modified to be applicable also for a nuclear PDF analysis. The required extensions of the code are discussed as well.

Neutrino mass ordering at DUNE: An extra ν bonus

We study the possibility of extracting the neutrino mass ordering at the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment using atmospheric neutrinos, which will be available before the muon neutrino beam starts being perational. The large statistics of the atmospheric muon neutrino and antineutrino samples at the far detector, together with the baselines of thousands of kilometers that these atmospheric (anti)neutrinos travel, provide the ideal ingredients to extract the neutrino mass ordering via matter effects in the neutrino propagation through the Earth. Crucially, muon capture by Argon provides excellent charge-tagging, allowing to disentangle the neutrino and antineutrino signature. This is a critical extra benefit of having a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber as far detector, that could render a $4\sigma$ extraction of the mass ordering after ten years of exposure.

Constraint of the MINERν A medium energy neutrino flux using neutrino-electron elastic scattering

Elastic neutrino scattering on electrons is a precisely-known purely leptonic process that provides a standard candle for measuring neutrino flux in conventional neutrino beams. Using a total sample of 810 neutino-electron scatters after background subtraction, the measurement reduces the normalization uncertainty on the muon neutrino NuMI flux between 2 and 20 GeV from 7.5% to 3.9%. This is the most precise measurement of neutrino-electron scattering to date, will reduce uncertainties on MINERvA's absolute cross section measurements, and demonstrates a technique that can be used in future neutrino beams such as LBNF.

Searches for sterile neutrinos at very short baseline reactor experiments

For a long time there were 3 main experimental indications in favor of the existence of sterile neutrinos: appearance in the beam in the LSND experiment, flux deficit in comparison with theoretical expectations in reactor experiments, and ve deficit in calibration runs with radioactive sources in the Ga solar neutrino experiments SAGE and GALEX. All three problems can be explained by the existence of sterile neutrinos with the mass square difference in the ballpark of 1 eV2. Recently the MiniBooNE collaboration observed electron (anti)neutrino appearance in the muon (anti)neutrino beams. The significance of the effect reaches 6.0σ level when combined with the LSND result. Even more recently the NEUTRINO-4 collaboration claimed the observation of oscillations to sterile neutrinos with a significance slightly higher than 3σ. If these results are confirmed, New Physics beyond the Standard Model would be required. More than 10 experiments are devoted to searches of sterile neutrinos. Six very short baseline reactor experiments are taking data just now. We review the present results and perspectives of these experiments.

New results from the OPERA experiment in the CNGS neutrino beam

A new analysis of full OPERA data set was performed, based on looser selection criteria and multivariate approach. Oscillation parameters and tau neutrino cross-section have been determined with a reduced statistical uncertainty, and the discovery of tau neutrino appearance is confirmed at 6.1σ level. Moreover, the search for electron neutrino events has been extended to the full dataset, exploiting an improved method for the electron neutrino energy estimation. New limits have been set in the 3+1 neutrino model.

New method for the generation of neutrino beams at accelerators

The generation of neutrino beams at proton accelerators is a difficult scientific and engineering problem. To obtain narrow directional neutrino beams for experiments, intense extracted proton beams are used, secondary particles ([Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] mesons) are generated at an external target. Further, to obtain parallel beams of these neutrino parent particles, high-current electromagnetic lenses are used. In this work, a surprisingly simple method based on a crystal focusing device has been proposed to obtain neutrino beams. Neutrino fluxes are calculated in comparison with the traditional scheme.

Neutrino-driven Instability of Ion Acoustic Waves in an Ultrarelativistic Degenerate Plasma

Abstract The coupling between ion acoustic waves (IAWs) and a neutrino beam undergoing flavor oscillations in a dense, relativistically degenerate plasma is analyzed. The neutrino-driven streaming instability of the IAWs is investigated with relevance to plasma conditions at the last stage of stellar evolution in a massive supernova progenitor. The influence of neutrino beam parameters such as the energy of the incident neutrino beam and eigenfrequency of the neutrino flavor oscillations on the instability growth rate is obtained numerically. It is observed that the neutrino flavor oscillations significantly affect the neutrino-driven instability of the IAWs. Our results also indicate that the time period for the onset of the streaming neutrino-driven instability is shorter than the typical time period of a core-collapse supernova explosion. The findings of this investigation may shed new light on the understanding of the underlying physical mechanism responsible for the core-collapse supernova.

Design study of pion and muon beam transport line for MOMENT

Abstract A MuOn-decay Medium-baseline NeuTrino beam facility (MOMENT) was proposed for the leptonic CP violation determination and other potential neutrino physics by offering extremely high flux neutrinos decayed from muons without cooling and acceleration. The huge transverse and large momentum acceptances are needed for the secondary beamline of MOMENT and the beam dynamics has been studied in detail. The whole beamline based on large-aperture superconducting solenoids is composed of several sections: charge selection section, pion decay channel, bending section, adiabatic taper and muon decay channel. To improve particles transmission and neutrino flux while maintaining low background at the far detector of 150 km, the curved solenoids with additional vertical dipole field are applied in the charge selection and bending sections. The adiabatic parameter changes between the sections are also adopted to enhance the neutrino flux. The end-to-end simulations have been carried out and the muon antineutrino flux at the far detector can reach 4.1 × 1011/m2/year with a low background of unwanted neutrino species.