Research in Neutrino Physics
- Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
We describe here the recent activities of our two groups over the first year of this award (effectively November 2010 through January 2012) and our proposed activities and associated budgets for the coming grant year. Both of our groups are collaborating on the Double Chooz reactor neutrino experiment and are playing major roles in calibration and analysis. A major milestone was reached recently: the collaboration obtained the first result on the search for θ13 based on 100 days of data from the far detector. Our data indicates that θ13 is not zero; specifically the best fit of the neutrino oscillation hypothesis to our data gives sin2(2θ13) = 0.086 ± 0.041 (stat) ± 0.030 (syst). The null oscillation hypothesis is excluded at the 94.6% C.L. This result has been submitted to Physical Review Letters. As we continue to take data with the far detector in the coming year, in parallel with completing the construction of the near lab and installing the near detector, we expect the precision of our measurement to improve as we gather significantly more statistics, gain better control of backgrounds through use of partial power data and improved event selection, and better understand the detector energy scale and detection efficiency from calibration data. With both detectors taking data starting in the second half of 2013, we expect to further drive down the uncertainty on our measurement of sin2(2θ13) to less than 0.02. Stancu’s group is also collaborating on the MiniBooNE experiment. Data taking is scheduled to continue through April, by which time 1.18 × 1021 POT is projected. The UA group is playing a leading role in the measurement of antineutrino cross sections, which should be the subject of a publication later this year as well as of Ranjan Dharmapalan’s Ph.D. thesis, which he is expected to defend by the end of this year. It is time to begin working on projects which will eventually succeed Double Chooz and MiniBooNE as the main foci of our efforts. The Stancu group plans to become re–involved in LBNE and possibly also to join NO A, and the Busenitz group has begun to explore joining a direct dark matter search.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-96ER40967
- OSTI ID:
- 1158769
- Report Number(s):
- DE-FG02-96ER40967
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Measurement of θ 13 in Double Chooz using neutron captures on hydrogen with novel background rejection techniques
Reactor disappearance in the Double Chooz experiment