Developing novel techniques for readout, calibration and event selection in the NOvA long-baseline neutrino experiment

Technical Report · Sat Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1327930· OSTI ID:1327930

Patterson, Ryan ^[1]; Backhouse, Christopher ^[1]; Bays, Kirk ^[1]; Lozier, Joseph ^[1]; Pershey, Daniel ^[1]

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1. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)

The NOvA long-baseline neutrino experiment uses a fine-grained, low-Z, fully active detector that offers unprecedented electron neutrino identification capabilities for a detector of its scale. In this award’s proposal, the PI outlined the development and implementation of novel techniques for channel readout, detector calibration, and event reconstruction that make full use of the strengths of the NOvA detector technology. In particular, this included designing custom event reconstruction algorithms that utilize the rich information available in the substructure of hadronic and electromagnetic showers. Exploiting this information provides not only substantial improvement in background rejection for the electron neutrino search but also better shower energy resolution (improving the precision on measured oscillation parameters) and a high-energy electromagnetic calibration source (through neutral pion events). The PI further proposed developing and deploying a new electronics readout scheme compatible with the existing hardware that can reduce near detector event pile-up and can offer powerful timing information to the reconstruction, allowing for cosmic ray muon tagging via track direction determination, among other things. In conjunction with the above, the PI proposed leading the calibration of the NOvA detectors, including characterizing individual electronics channels, correcting for spatial variations across the detector, and establishing absolute event energy scales. All three of these lines of effort have been successfully completed, feeding directly into the NOvA’s recent exciting neutrino oscillation results. The techniques developed under this award are detailed in this final technical report.

• Research Organization: California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Contributing Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; NOvA Collaboration
• DOE Contract Number: SC0006543
• OSTI ID: 1327930
• Report Number(s): DOE-CALTECH-06543; TRN: US1700329
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ELECTRON NEUTRINOS
CALIBRATION
READOUT SYSTEMS
NEUTRINO OSCILLATION
COSMIC MUONS
ENERGY RESOLUTION
ALGORITHMS
PARTICLE TRACKS
ACCURACY
DESIGN
IMPLEMENTATION
PROPOSALS
VARIATIONS
SHOWER COUNTERS
PARTICLE DISCRIMINATION
SPACE DEPENDENCE