Whitehead, Leigh (2012) A measurement of the electron neutrino component of the T2K beam using the near detector. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

T2K is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment located in Japan, with a 295km baseline and peak neutrino energy of 0:6 GeV. It is the first off-axis neutrino experiment where the beam is directed approximately 2.5° away from the detectors in order to produce a narrow-band neutrino beam. The experiment was designed to measure the mixing angle θ13 by measuring the neutrino oscillation process vμ -> ve. This measurement relies on the detection of electrons at the far detector from oscillations, and so it is vital to understand the size of the intrinsic ve component of the beam. A measurement of the intrinsic ve component of the T2K beam was performed using the ND280. An analysis that used all of the data taken by the ND280 from February 2010 until March 2011, a total of 1.09 x 10^20 POT, measured 67.7 +- 12.9(stat) +- 5.2(syst) CC ve interactions. The number of events corresponds to a ratio between data and simulation of 0.983+-0.191(stat)+-0.076(syst) and provides strong evidence that the neutrino flux is well simulated. The simulation from the intrinsic ve measurement was then combined with an analysis of vμ interactions in the ND280 to constrain the neutrino flux uncertainties. An idealised study that considered only statistical and flux systematic uncertainties concluded that the intrinsic ve analysis improved the constraint on the flux uncertainties compared to considering only the ND280 vμ analyses, with the effect most prominent at neutrino energies greater than 1 GeV.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	Q Science > QC Physics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Neutrinos
Date:	September 2012
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Physics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Barker, Gary John ; Boyd, Steven B.
Extent:	xiii, 156 leaves : illustrations, charts
Language:	eng
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/51675

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