Status of Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiments

Abstract: The current generation of long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments employ an off-axis nu_μ (or nu-bar_μ) beam produced by the decay of pions created when a proton beam strikes a target. The beam is monitored at detector facilities near the production point before traveling hundreds of kilometres to a far detector. Aiming the beam centre slightly away from the far detector provides the off-axis configuration which selects a narrow energy band beam tuned to maximize the oscillation probability. The status of these experiments will be presented.

The Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) experiment consists of a nu_μ or nu-bar_μ beam pro- duced at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Centre (J-PARC) in Tokai on the East coast of Japan, which is monitored by a suite of detectors before traveling 295 km to the Super-Kamiokande (SK) water Cerenkov detector. T2K has been in operation since 2010 and has been continually releasing new and exciting neutrino oscillation results. The most recent precision nu_μ -> nu_e appearance and nμ disappearance oscillation measurements as well as initial results running the experiment in the nμ beam configuration will be presented.

The NOnuA experiment, utilizing the NuMI beam and a near detector at Fermilab and a far detector at a distance of 810 km, began operation in 2014. The current status of NOnuA will also be shown.

Speaker: Dr. N.C. Hastings, Department of Physics, University of Regina