Speaker
Sanjay Swain
(Stanford University)
Description
The MINOS experiment at Fermilab uses two functionally identical detectors,
the near detector at Fermilab and the far detector at Soudan Mine in
Minnesota, to search for the muon-neutrino to electron-neutrino
oscillations and potentially constrain the last unknown mixing angle in the
3-flavor lepton mixing matrix. In order to estimate the backgrounds in the far
detector, where the potential oscillations can be measured, we need to understand
the beam composition at the near detector. I will discuss a data-driven method for
decomposing the near detector data which utilizes data taken in two different beam
configurations. The resulting background expectation at the far detector will also be discussed.
Primary author
Sanjay Swain
(Stanford University)
