The Main INjector Experiment ν – A is a neutrino – nucleus interaction experiment located in Fermilab (USA). It aims to accurately measure the neutrino interaction cross sections with a wide range of nuclei, as this is critical for the precision measurement of the neutrino oscillation parameters. MINERνA is a short baseline experiment. Its source is the NuMI beam, in which 1 to 20 GeV neutrinos and antineutrinos are obtained as decay products of the Main Injector proton beam hitting a graphite target at 120 GeV.  MINERνA is a scintillator based detector, composed mainly of succesive layers of plastic scintillator bars. When neutrinos reach MINERνA, they may first interact with one of several nuclear targets. These span a wide range in atomic number, including water, carbon (graphite), iron, lead and liquid helium. Then, an active tracking region allows fine reconstruction of the charged particles produced in the interaction. MINERνA also features surrounding electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters, in which the scintillators are interleaved with thick iron and lead layers, respectively. Aditionally, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment, which is located dowstream MINERνA, has muon spectrometer capabilites and provides this data to extend event reconstruction limits in MINERνA.

The PUCP HEP Group is an official member of the MINERνA collaboration. Its contributions include a complete design of the Test-Beam (TB) detector, the development of the event-display, callibration of the time of flight (TB), hadronic physics analysis in Geant 3 and 4, work in the Mapper module and the reduction of muon momenta reconstruction uncertainty (etc).  We also have a fully functional remote control room (UROC) at PUCP, which enables us to remotely monitor and control MINERνA and MINOS during assigned periods. It also gives new students the chance to interact with a high magnitude physics experiment and international collaboration.

Estado DGI: En proceso