RUI: Neutrino Oscillation Studies with MINOS and Super-K

This proposal requests support for research at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) to study neutrino oscillations using the MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) detectors at Fermilab and Soudan, and the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan, under the NSF Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) program. Recent results from Super-K have used neutrinos produced in cosmic ray interactions with the upper atmosphere to strongly suggest that muon neutrinos of energies from a few hundred MeV to a few hundred GeV oscillate to tau neutrinos as they travel the tens of thousands of kilometers through the earth to the detector. This would imply that neutrinos carry non-zero mass. The MINOS experiment is currently being constructed both to unambiguously confirm this result and to measure precisely the oscillation parameters using an intense well-calibrated man-made beam of neutrinos generated at Fermilab. The neutrinos will be observed by similar detectors near their origin in Fermilab and after travelling the 730-km to the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota. The differences in the signals at the two detectors will provide the best measurement yet of neutrino oscillation parameters.

The work being proposed here is for one physicist PI and two undergraduate students to participate in the construction of the MINOS far detector and to develop part of the Detector Control System. Additionally, the researchers will continue to participate in the operation of the Super-K detector, gathering more data to improve its statistical significance while improving the analysis techniques.