Date Thesis Awarded

5-2009

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Science (BS)

Department

Physics

Advisor

Jeffrey Kevin Nelson

Committee Members

Gina L. Hoatson

Jan Chaloupka

Akiko Fujimoto

Abstract

The MINERvA (Main Injector Experiment of the v-A) neutrino detector is a fine-grained, fully active detector which is to be installed along the NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) beamline upstream of the MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) near detector at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The goal of the MINERvA experiment is to improve understanding of neutrino-nucleus interactions in the 2 GeV -10 GeV energy region. Before the MINERvA experiment can gather useful data however, it must be calibrated. The primary calibration will be made using the MINERvA Meson Test Detector (MTest), which is essentially a smaller version of the MINERvA detector. Once constructed, the MTest detector will be installed in the Meson Test Beam facility at Fermilab, which will provide beams of protons, pions, and electrons at tunable energies. The patterns of energy depositions from interactions of each of these particles in the MTest detector will be used to optimize simulations of the particle interactions in MINERvA. This will provide the energy calibration for the MINERvA detector and help define distinguishing characteristics for different types of particles in MINERvA.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Comments

Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.

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