Measurements of atmospheric neutrinos and antineutrinos in the MINOS Far Detector

Abstract

This paper reports measurements of atmospheric neutrino and antineutrino interactions in the MINOS Far Detector, based on 2553 live-days (37.9 kton-years) of data. A total of 2072 candidate events are observed. These are separated into 905 contained-vertex muons and 466 neutrino-induced rock-muons, both produced by charged-current ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$ interactions, and 701 contained-vertex showers, composed mainly of charged-current ${\nu }_e$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_e$ interactions and neutral-current interactions. The curvature of muon tracks in the magnetic field of the MINOS Far Detector is used to select separate samples of ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$ events. The observed ratio of ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$ to ${\nu }_{\mu }$ events is compared with the Monte Carlo simulation, giving a double ratio of $R_{\bar{\nu }/\nu }^{data}/R_{\bar{\nu }/\nu }^{MC}=1.03\pm 0.08(stat.)\pm 0.08(syst.)$. The ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$ data are separated into bins of $L/E$ resolution, based on the reconstructed energy and direction of each event, and a maximum likelihood fit to the observed $L/E$ distributions is used to determine the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters. This fit returns 90% confidence limits of $|\Delta m^2|=(1.9\pm 0.4)\times 10^{-3}e{V}^2$ and $si{n}^{2}2\theta >0.86$. The fit is extended to incorporate separate ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$ oscillation parameters, returning 90% confidence limits of $|\Delta m^2|-|\Delta {\bar{m}}^2|=0.6_{-0.8}^{+2.4}\times 10^{-3}e{V}^2$ on the difference between the squared-mass splittings for neutrinos and antineutrinos.

22 pages, 19 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D

References in corpus (8)

• Measurement of Neutrino Oscillation by the K2K Experiment
• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• Measurement of the neutrino mass splitting and flavor mixing by MINOS
• Uncertainties in Atmospheric Neutrino Fluxes
• A Measurement of Atmospheric Neutrino Flux Consistent with Tau Neutrino Appearance
• Interpretation of MINOS data in terms of non-standard neutrino interactions
• Status of the CPT Violating Interpretations of the LSND Signal
• Apparent multiple Delta m^2_32 in muon anti-neutrino and muon neutrino survival oscillations from non-standard interaction matter effect

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Implication of neutrino backgrounds on the reach of next generation dark matter direct detection experiments
• Measurement of Neutrino and Antineutrino Oscillations Using Beam and Atmospheric Data in MINOS
• Combined analysis of ${\nu }_{\mu }$ disappearance and ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_e$ appearance in MINOS using accelerator and atmospheric neutrinos
• Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay: a Probe of Physics Beyond the Standard Model
• Perturbative charm production and the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux in light of RHIC and LHC
• Precision constraints for three-flavor neutrino oscillations from the full MINOS+ and MINOS data set
• Neutrino physics with dark matter detectors
• Quantum Dissipation and CP Violation in MINOS
• Intrinsic charm contribution to the prompt atmospheric neutrino flux
• Mapping the dominant regions of the phase space associated with $c\bar{c}$ production relevant for the Prompt Atmospheric Neutrino Flux
• The Neutrino Mass Hierarchy from Nuclear Reactor Experiments
• Simulation Studies for Electromagnetic Design of INO ICAL Magnet and its Response to Muons
• Neutrino Oscillations with MINOS and MINOS+
• Neutrino Oscillations
• Measuring Changes in the Atmospheric Neutrino Rate Over Gigayear Timescales
• A Bayesian technique for improving the sensitivity of the atmospheric neutrino L/E analysis
• Atmospheric Dependence of the Stopping Cosmic Ray Muon Rate at Ground Level
• Depletion of atmospheric neutrino fluxes from parton energy loss
• Sterile neutrino searches with reactor antineutrinos using coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering experiments
• First Measurement of Correlated Charge Noise in Superconducting Qubits at an Underground Facility
• Minimal structure for neutrino mass matrix
• The High Energy Neutrino Nuisance at a Medium Baseline Reactor Experiment