Wednesday 05 September 2018
Speaker:  Anna Holin (UCL)
Title:  "MINOS+ and the NuMI Beam"


The MINOS(+) experiment took neutrino oscillation data in the NuMI beam from 2005-2016. The MINOS Near Detector (ND), an iron scintillator calorimeter functionally identical to the MINOS Far Detector, is on-axis and, at 1.04km, close to the NuMI Beam target that is used to generate the NuMI neutrino beam. This makes the MINOS ND the best beam flux monitoring device, better than any other instrumentation along the beam line. Because of this, the MINOS ND is even now still in use to monitor the NuMI beam for the NOvA and MINERvA experiments despite the fact that the MINOS+ experiment is no longer taking data. 
Over the years, the MINOS ND has accumulated a treasure trove of data which can be used to study the behaviour of the NuMI beam flux and help understand it. A particularly valuable sample is the Horn Off Data, taken when the focusing horns are off. This sample can serve as a special sample to probe the hadron production modelling by the Monte Carlo and understand the NuMI Beam better, in the absence of effects due to any horn focusing mis-modeling. Understanding the NuMI beam is crucial for upcoming high-precision neutrino experiments such as DUNE and MINOS has some of the world's best data to do this.