Neutrino oscillations with NOvA
AUG 18, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023608
Various : NOνA is a collaboration of 180 scientists and engineers from 28 institutions which plans to study neutrino oscillations using the existing NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. The NOνA experiment is designed to search for oscillations of muon neutrinos to electron neutrinos by comparing the electron neutrino event rate measured at the Fermilab site with the electron neutrino event rate measured at a location just south of International Falls, Minnesota, 810 kilometers distant from Fermilab. If oscillations occur, the far site will see the appearance of electrons in the muon neutrino beam produced at Fermilab.As the Washington Post describes it in this story :
Scientists are playing an exotic game of pitch and catch between Illinois and Minnesota. Their catcher’s mitt is solid iron, weighs 5,500 tons, and is parked in northern Minnesota in an abandoned iron mine. With millions of dollars from the federal stimulus package, construction crews are now building a second mitt near the Canadian border . It’s even heavier, some 15,000 tons, and is made of 385,000 liquid-filled cells of PVC plastic.Five hundred miles to the south is the pitcher: Fermilab , a sprawling U.S. government laboratory west of Chicago where physicists do violent things with tiny particles.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
