Date Awarded

Fall 2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Physics

Advisor

Michael Kordosky

Committee Member

Vittorio Paolone

Committee Member

David Armstrong

Committee Member

Josh Erlich

Committee Member

Jeff Nelson

Abstract

The determination of the neutrino flux in any conventional neutrino beam presents a challenge for the current and future short and long baseline neutrino experiments. The uncertainties associated with the production and attenuation of the hadrons in the beamline materials along with those associated with the beam optics have a big effect in the flux spectrum knowledge. For experiments like MINERvA, understanding the flux is crucial since it enters directly into every neutrino-nucleus cross-section measurements. The foundation of this work is predicting the neutrino flux at MINERvA using dedicated measurements of hadron production in hadron-nucleus collisions and incorporating in-situ MINERvA data that can provide additional constraints. This work also includes the prospect for predicting the flux at other detectors like the NOvA Near. The procedure and conclusions of this thesis will have a big impact on future hadron production experiments and on determining the flux for the upcoming DUNE experiment.

DOI

http://doi.org/10.21220/S2G59J

Rights

© The Author

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