Measurement of atmospheric neutrino oscillations with very large volume neutrino telescopes

Neutrino oscillations have been probed during the last few decades using multiple neutrino sources and experimental set-ups. In the recent years, very large volume neutrino telescopes have started contributing to the field. First ANTARES and then IceCube have relied on large and sparsely instrumented volumes to observe atmospheric neutrinos for combinations of baselines and energies inaccessible to other experiments. Using this advantage, the latest result from IceCube starts approaching the precision of other established technologies, and is paving the way for future detectors, such as ORCA and PINGU. These new projects seek to provide better measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters, and eventually determine the neutrino mass ordering. The results from running experiments and the potential from proposed projects are discussed in this review, emphasizing the experimental challenges involved in the measurements.Comment: Review paper to appear in the special issue "Neutrino Masses and Oscillations" of Advances in High Energy Physics (accepted); 22 pages, 24 figure

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF

The Physics Program for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Fermilab Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is described

ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review Report

This draft report summarizes and details the findings, results, and recommendations derived from the ASCR/HEP Exascale Requirements Review meeting held in June, 2015. The main conclusions are as follows. 1) Larger, more capable computing and data facilities are needed to support HEP science goals in all three frontiers: Energy, Intensity, and Cosmic. The expected scale of the demand at the 2025 timescale is at least two orders of magnitude -- and in some cases greater -- than that available currently. 2) The growth rate of data produced by simulations is overwhelming the current ability, of both facilities and researchers, to store and analyze it. Additional resources and new techniques for data analysis are urgently needed. 3) Data rates and volumes from HEP experimental facilities are also straining the ability to store and analyze large and complex data volumes. Appropriately configured leadership-class facilities can play a transformational role in enabling scientific discovery from these datasets. 4) A close integration of HPC simulation and data analysis will aid greatly in interpreting results from HEP experiments. Such an integration will minimize data movement and facilitate interdependent workflows. 5) Long-range planning between HEP and ASCR will be required to meet HEP's research needs. To best use ASCR HPC resources the experimental HEP program needs a) an established long-term plan for access to ASCR computational and data resources, b) an ability to map workflows onto HPC resources, c) the ability for ASCR facilities to accommodate workflows run by collaborations that can have thousands of individual members, d) to transition codes to the next-generation HPC platforms that will be available at ASCR facilities, e) to build up and train a workforce capable of developing and using simulations and analysis to support HEP scientific research on next-generation systems.Comment: 77 pages, 13 Figures; draft report, subject to further revisio

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment: Exploring Fundamental Symmetries of the Universe

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early Universe, the dynamics of the supernova bursts that produced the heavy elements necessary for life and whether protons eventually decay --- these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our Universe, its current state and its eventual fate. The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) represents an extensively developed plan for a world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions. LBNE is conceived around three central components: (1) a new, high-intensity neutrino source generated from a megawatt-class proton accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, (2) a near neutrino detector just downstream of the source, and (3) a massive liquid argon time-projection chamber deployed as a far detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This facility, located at the site of the former Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, is approximately 1,300 km from the neutrino source at Fermilab -- a distance (baseline) that delivers optimal sensitivity to neutrino charge-parity symmetry violation and mass ordering effects. This ambitious yet cost-effective design incorporates scalability and flexibility and can accommodate a variety of upgrades and contributions. With its exceptional combination of experimental configuration, technical capabilities, and potential for transformative discoveries, LBNE promises to be a vital facility for the field of particle physics worldwide, providing physicists from around the globe with opportunities to collaborate in a twenty to thirty year program of exciting science. In this document we provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess.Comment: Major update of previous version. This is the reference document for LBNE science program and current status. Chapters 1, 3, and 9 provide a comprehensive overview of LBNE's scientific objectives, its place in the landscape of neutrino physics worldwide, the technologies it will incorporate and the capabilities it will possess. 288 pages, 116 figure

Lectures on neutrino phenomenology

The fundamental properties of the lepton sector include the neutrino masses and flavor mixings. Both are difficult to observe because of the extremely small neutrino masses and neutrino-matter cross sections. In these lectures, we focus on the basic concepts for the determination of neutrino properties. We introduce neutrino oscillations as standard mechanism for neutrino flavor changes, and we discuss methods to measure the neutrino mass. Furthermore, we illustrate how precision measurements in neutrino oscillations will be performed in the future, and may even open a window to new physics properties, such as motivated by LHC physics. Finally, we discuss some applications of neutrinos in astrophysics, such as neutrino oscillations in the Sun. We also illustrate how neutrinos from extragalactic cosmic accelerators may be used for the determination of neutrino properties.Comment: 37 pages, 13 figures, 1 table. Lectures given at the Schladming Winter School 2010 "Masses and Constants"

Measurement of W+W- Production in pp Collisions at s = 8 TeV and Probing Anomalous Triple-Gauge-Boson Couplings with the ATLAS Detector.

This thesis presents the measurement of the vector boson pair W^+W^- production cross section in proton-proton collisions at the center-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. The leptonic decay channels of the WW+ll for l=(e,mu) are analyzed using data corresponding to 20.3 fb^-1 of integrated luminosity collected by the ATLAS detector in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (in Geneva, Switzerland). The experimental signature of this measurement is two energetic isolated leptons (e^+e^-, mu^+mu^-, e^+mu-, e^-mu^+) and associated large missing transverse energy (due to neutrinos in final states). A total of 6636 WW+ll candidate events is selected in ATLAS data with an estimation of 1547+/-28 background events from non-W^+W^- production processes. The measured total production cross section is 71^(+1.1)_(-1.1)(stat)^(+5.7)_(-5.0)(syst)^(+2.1)_(-2.0)(lumi) pb,, which is comparable with the theoretical prediction of 63.2^(+2.0)_(-1.8) pb calculated with NNLO QCD and NLO EW corrections. The anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings (WWZ and WWgamma) could signal new physics beyond the Standard Model at much higher energy scales compared to the directly detectable mass scale at the LHC. An effective Lagrangian is used to generalize the anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings to describe the W^+W^- productions at the LHC. These anomalous couplings can be experimentally probed by comparing the leading lepton transverse momentum spectrum with the theoretical predictions in different triple-gauge-boson coupling space. No observation of deviations from the Standard Model predicted couplings is found by a maximum likelihood fitting of the leading lepton transverse momentum. Therefore, the most stringent limits to date on the anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings are set from this analysis.PhDPhysicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116692/1/haoluf_1.pd