Brailsford, Dominic Bevan (2013) Measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters from muon neutrino disappearance with an off-axis beam. Physical review letters, 111 (21): 211803. ISSN 1079-7114
Abstract
The T2K Collaboration reports a precision measurement of muon neutrino disappearance with an off-axis neutrino beam with a peak energy of 0.6 GeV. Near detector measurements are used to constrain the neutrino flux and cross section parameters. The Super-Kamiokande far detector, which is 295 km downstream of the neutrino production target, collected data corresponding to 3.01×1020 protons on target. In the absence of neutrino oscillations, 205±17 (syst) events are expected to be detected while only 58 muon neutrino event candidates are observed. A fit to the neutrino rate and energy spectrum, assuming three neutrino flavors and normal mass hierarchy yields a best-fit mixing angle sin2(θ23)=0.514±0.082 and mass splitting |Δm322|=2.44-0.15+0.17×10-3 eV2/c4. Our result corresponds to the maximal oscillation disappearance probability.