Analysing Neutrino Oscillations in the T2K Experiment

by Ewan Miller (IFAE - Neutrino)

Wednesday 5 Feb 2025, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Madrid

IFAE Seminar Room (In-person)

Neutrinos have been observed to oscillate between the three known flavour states: electron, muon, and tau, with a probability based on their initial energy, and on the parameters of the so called PMNS matrix. Hints have also been seen that this process violates CP symmetry, and definitively determining if this is the case this is one of the main goals of the current and next generation of long baseline neutrino oscillation (LBNO) experiments. 

LBNO experiments, such as the Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) experiment in Japan, extract information about the PMNS parameters by producing a beam of (predominantly) muon neutrinos, characterising it using a near detector, and then again some large distance away (hundreds of kilometers) using a far detector. The beam composition at each point can then be used to infer the oscillation parameters.

This talk will give an overview of the analysis techniques used in T2K to measure these parameters. In particular it will focus on the construction of the model used to predict event rates at the near and far detector, and the use of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to fit this model to data.