Alexander Booth, Nova

3 Flavour Oscillations at the NOvA Experiment: Latest Results and a Look to the Future

Abstract:

NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment searching for electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance. To do this, NOvA uses the NuMI beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory along with two functionally identical detectors, separated by a baseline of 809 km. A near detector, which is close to the point of neutrino production, provides a measurement of initial beam energy spectra and flavour composition. The spectra are then extrapolated to a far detector and compared to data to look for oscillations. The experiment is able to constrain several parameters of the PMNS matrix and is sensitive to the neutrino mass hierarchy.

This seminar presents a 3 flavour oscillation analysis of 6 years of NuMI data collected by the NOvA far detector corresponding to a 14 ktonne equivalent exposure of $13.60 x 10²⁰ and $12.50 x 10²⁰ protons on target, in neutrino and antineutrino beam modes respectively. The analysis, shown for the first time at the International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in 2020, builds on previous results with a new simulation, updated reconstruction and roughly 50% more neutrino data.

There will also be a look toward the future, with particular focus on the on-going effort by the NOvA and T2K collaborations to combine and fit jointly their datasets.