Speaker
Dr
Ashley Back
(Iowa State University)
Description
NOvA continues as one of the leading long-baseline neutrino experiments,
thanks to Fermilab's powerful 700 kW NuMI beam, which provides NOvA with a beam
of predominantly muon neutrinos or antineutrinos. NOvA studies neutrino
oscillations using two detectors, both constructed from plastic extrusions
filled with liquid scintillator, placed 810 km apart and both slightly off-axis
from the beam center. A key part of NOvA's approach is that we sample the NuMI
beam with a near detector close to the target. This allows us to build an
accurate far detector prediction and, since the detectors are functionally
identical, largely cancel key flux and cross-section systematic uncertainties.
The three-flavour long-baseline search probes undetermined physics parameters
that describe neutrino mixing matrix, such as the mass hierarchy, CP violation
in the lepton sector and the octant of $\theta_{23}$. Although statistical
uncertainties dominate in our current results, understanding key sources of
systematic uncertainty and their correlations is crucial in a joint fit to
selected $\nu_{\mu}$ disappearance and $\nu_e$ appearance events, in both
neutrino and antineutrino beam modes. In this talk, I will describe how we build
up an accurate prediction at the far detector, using near detector data, and
how we seek to understand key sources of systematic uncertainty by studying
systematically shifted far detector predictions.
Primary author
Dr
Ashley Back
(Iowa State University)