Antineutrino Physics at MINOS

Abstract

We present two new measurements of antineutrino properties based on a data sample corresponding to 3.2×10^(20) protons-on-target, exploiting MINOS' unique ability to distinguish positive and negative muons and thus separate charged current neutrino and antineutrino interactions event-by-event. The first measurement takes advantage of the 6% antineutrino component of the NuMI neutrino beam to measure antineutrino oscillations between the near and far detectors. We observe 42 events at the far detector with an expectation of 58.3±7.6(stat.)±3.6(syst.) assuming CPT-conserving oscillations, excluding (5.0<Δm(overbar)^2<81)×10^(−3)eV^2 at 90% confidence at maximal mixing. We also present a search for neutrino-antineutrino transitions ν_μ → ν(overbar)_μ, which would result in an excess of antineutrino events in the Far Detector relative to the rate expected from the intrinsic antineutrino component in the neutrino beam. We observe no excess and set a limit of 0.026 on the transition probability at 90% confidence.

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