Measurement of the Double Di↵erential Inclusive Muon Neutrino Charged-current Cross-section in the NOvA Near Detector

Behera, B and Giri, Anjan Kumar (2018) Measurement of the Double Di↵erential Inclusive Muon Neutrino Charged-current Cross-section in the NOvA Near Detector. PhD thesis, Indian institute of technology Hyderabad.

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Abstract

NOvA (NuMI O↵-axis ⌫e Appearance) is the US flagship long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, beams of (anti)muon-neutrinos are used to precisely measure the rate of (anti)muon-neutrino disappearance and (anti)electron-neutrino appearance. The NOvA far detector (FD) is 810 km from the NuMI production target and positioned 14 mrad o↵-axis from the NuMI beam, resulting in a narrow-band neutrino flux peaked around 2 GeV. The NOvA near detector (ND) is located approximately 1 km from the NuMI production target, o↵-axis such that the peak of the neutrino flux matches that of the far detector. However, the proximity of the ND to the production target means that it is exposed to a broader neutrino energy flux, and has a longer tail of neutrino interactions at higher energies than the FD. The high rate of interactions in the ND provides an opportunity for a rich program of neutrino-nucleus cross-section measurements. This thesis showcases the measurement of the ⌫µ inclusive charged current cross-section using the NOvA Near Detector (ND) data. The neutrino beam in the ND peaks near 2 GeV and allows a unique probe of the turn on and turn o↵ of di↵erent interaction modes available to neutrinos. We present a flux-averaged double-di↵erential inclusive cross-section measurement of muon-neutrino charged-current interactions in the NOvA near detector as a function of the muon energy and angle. We also present the measurement of the cross-section as a function of neutrino energy in a restricted phase space of the muon kinematics. The data used for this measurement consist of 8.09⇥1020 POT of neutrino beam collected between August 2014 and February 2017.

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