Automatic track recognition for large-angle minimum ionizing particles in nuclear emulsions

Abstract

We previously developed an automatic track scanning system which enables the detection of large-angle nuclear fragments in the nuclear emulsion films of the OPERA experiment. As a next step, we have investigated this system's track recognition capability for large-angle minimum ionizing particles $(1.0\le |tan\theta |\le 3.5)$. This paper shows that, for such tracks, the system has a detection efficiency of 95$\%$ or higher and reports the achieved angular accuracy of the automatically recognized tracks. This technology is of general purpose and will likely contribute not only to various analyses in the OPERA experiment, but also to future experiments, e.g. on low-energy neutrino and hadron interactions, or to future research on cosmic rays using nuclear emulsions carried by balloons.

11 pages, 10 figures, accepted by JINST

References in corpus (7)

• Observation of Tau Neutrino Interactions
• Observation of a first ${\nu }_{\tau }$ candidate in the OPERA experiment in the CNGS beam
• Evidence for ${\nu }_{\mu }\to {\nu }_{\tau }$ appearance in the CNGS neutrino beam with the OPERA experiment
• Measurement of charm production in neutrino charged-current interactions
• Observation of nu_tau appearance in the CNGS beam with the OPERA experiment
• Automatic scanning of nuclear emulsions with wide-angle acceptance for nuclear fragment detection
• Study of hadron interactions in a lead-emulsion target

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Discovery of tau neutrino appearance in the CNGS neutrino beam with the OPERA experiment
• Tau Neutrinos in the Next Decade: from GeV to EeV
• Wide angle acceptance and high-speed track recognition in nuclear emulsion