Hosseini, Behzad (2015) Search for Tau Neutrinos in the τ → e Decay Channel in the OPERA Experiment. [Tesi di dottorato]

[thumbnail of hosseini_behzad_27.pdf]
Preview
Text
hosseini_behzad_27.pdf

Download (12MB) | Preview
Item Type: Tesi di dottorato
Resource language: English
Title: Search for Tau Neutrinos in the τ → e Decay Channel in the OPERA Experiment
Creators:
Creators
Email
Hosseini, Behzad
behzad@na.infn.it
Date: 31 March 2015
Number of Pages: 138
Institution: Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Department: Fisica
Scuola di dottorato: Scienze fisiche
Dottorato: Fisica fondamentale ed applicata
Ciclo di dottorato: 27
Coordinatore del Corso di dottorato:
nome
email
Velotta, Raffaele
rvelotta@unina.it
Tutor:
nome
email
De Lellis, Giovanni
UNSPECIFIED
Date: 31 March 2015
Number of Pages: 138
Keywords: OPERA experiment, Neutrino oscillations, Nuclear emulsion films
Settori scientifico-disciplinari del MIUR: Area 02 - Scienze fisiche > FIS/01 - Fisica sperimentale
Date Deposited: 14 Apr 2015 09:22
Last Modified: 08 Oct 2015 08:06
URI: http://www.fedoa.unina.it/id/eprint/10537
DOI: 10.6092/UNINA/FEDOA/10537

Collection description

The OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion tRacking Apparatus) experiment is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment that was designed to perform a conclusive test of the νμ → ντ oscillations hypothesis. The main aim of this experiment is a direct observation of τ leptons in ντ charged-current interactions. A good electromagnetic shower reconstruction is important for the τ detection in the τ → e decay channel. So far, 4 ντ candidates have been observed in the OPERA detector with a background of 0.23 events. Given the number of analyzed events and the low background, νμ → ντ oscillations are established with a significance of 4.2 σ. Reconstruction of electromagnetic showers is one of the fundamental tools needed by neutrino experiments and the estimation of their energy is a crucial issue. This is also true for the OPERA experiment where we have developed and tested an algorithm, in order to evaluate the energy of electron through the identification of its shower for the τ → e decay channel as well as νe interactions by using the OPERA bricks. Normal reconstruction of a shower event depends upon the shower being contained in one brick. However, when a shower is initiated in the upstream portion of the brick, the shower will begin in the first brick, pass through the Electronic Detector (ED) and end in the second brick; making normal reconstruction methods unusable. Nearly half of the electromagnetic shower events detected take place across two bricks, meaning that previously, half of detected events had to be discarded. I have expanded my code in such a way to analyze showers with one or two brick distributions, allowing us to include 50 percent more events in our data sets. This approach is using for the first time the information of the downstream brick to reconstruct and estimate the energy of electromagnetic showers in the OPERA experiment.

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item