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Michel electrons analysis in the fine-grained detectors for T2K

University of British Columbia

Over the decades, neutrino physics has advanced remarkably. Confirmation of neutrino oscillation is one of the important results. It indicates that neutrinos have non-zero mass and flavor mixing. T2K is an experiment designed to observe neutrino oscillations. It is an accelerator-based experiment with a baseline of 295 km across Japan from Tokai to Kamioka. The accelerator and the near detector are at Tokai and the far detector is at Kamioka. The near detector characterizes neutrino interactions in the absence of oscillation effects. Fine-Grained Detectors (FGDs) are a part of the near detector, which provide target mass and track particles emerging from neutrino interactions occurring in the detector. The primary neutrino interaction channel mode of interest is the charged-current quasi-elastic (CCQE) interaction. In CCQE interactions, a charged-lepton and a proton are in the final state. The neutrino energy is reconstructed and its flavor is identified by the charged lepton. Other, non-CCQE neutrino interactions have another particles in the final state such as pions. The pions may stop in an FGD and decay to produce muons, which in turn stop and decay to produce electrons. The electrons from muon decay at rest are called Michel electrons. Michel electrons are a powerful tool to distinguish CCQE and non-CCQE interactions. This thesis describes the studies of Michel electron activity in the near detector using cosmic rays.

Text

2011-12-09

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/39585

Physics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/