RUI: Neutrino Experiments with the NuMI Beam

Otterbein College, Westerville OH

Investigators

Abstract

Neutrinos (meaning: "Small neutral ones") are elementary particles that often travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a minuscule, but nonzero mass. They are usually denoted by the Greek letter nu. Most neutrinos passing through the Earth emanate from the Sun, and more than 50 trillion solar electron neutrinos pass through the human body every second. Neutrinos are most often created or detected with a well defined flavor (electron, muon, tau). However, in a phenomenon known as neutrino flavor oscillation, neutrinos are able to oscillate between the three available flavors while they propagate through space. In this RUI project, Professor Tagg and two undergraduate research assistants at Otterbein College will continue research on neutrino oscillations with the MINOS long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment and begin research on the MINERíA neutrino-nucleus cross-section experiment. MINOS is the flagship U.S. experiment on neutrino oscillations for the next several years. MINERvA is a valuable and opportunistic component of the future NuMI program that will coordinate with NOvA to make measurements of inclusive and exclusive neutrino-nucleus cross sections with the NOvA beam line with a fine-grained scintillation detector and the NOvA near detector. Objectives include nuclear structure measurements via a weak probe justified both on intrinsic interest and to help interpret current and future experiments. Marvin Goldberg PO MPS/PHY/EPP