Hadron Production Measurements for Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiments with NA61/SHINE

A precise prediction of the neutrino flux is a key ingredient for achieving the physics goals of long-baseline neutrino experiments. In modern accelerator-based neutrino experiments, neutrino beams are created from the decays of secondary hadrons produced in hadron-nucleus interactions. Hadron production is the leading systematic uncertainty source on the neutrino flux prediction; therefore, its precise measurement is essential. The NA61/SHINE is a fixed-target experiment at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, which studies hadron production in hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions for various physics goals. For neutrino physics, light hadron beams (protons, pions, and kaons) are collided with a light nuclear target (carbon, aluminum, and beryllium) and spectra of outgoing hadrons are measured. These proceedings will review the recent results and ongoing hadron production measurements with NA61/SHINE for the precise neutrino flux predictions in the T2K and Fermilab long-baseline neutrino experiments. It will also discuss the prospects for future hadron production measurements with NA61/SHINE beyond 2020, after the Long Shutdown 2 of the accelerator complex at CERN.Comment: Talk presented at CIPANP2018. 8 pages, LaTeX, 8 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.0053

Hadron Production Experiments

Precise prediction of the neutrino flux is a key ingredient to achieving the physics goals of accelerator-based neutrino experiments. In modern accelerator-based neutrino experiments, neutrino beams are created by colliding protons with a nuclear target. Secondary hadrons are produced in these collisions, and their decays contribute to the neutrino flux. The hadron production is the leading systematic uncertainty source on the neutrino flux prediction; therefore its precise measurement is desirable. In these proceedings, review of recent hadron production measurements and the latest results from the NA61/SPS Heavy Ion and Neutrino Experiment (NA61/SHINE) are presented. In addition, plans of NA61/SHINE hadron production measurements for the next generation neutrino experiments and NA61/SHINE physics program extension beyond 2020 are discussed.Comment: Talk presented at NuPhys2016 (London, 12-14 December 2016). 8 pages, LaTeX, 10 figure

Downside risk minimization via a large deviations approach

We consider minimizing the probability of falling below a target growth rate of the wealth process up to a time horizon $T$ in an incomplete market model, and then study the asymptotic behavior of minimizing probability as $T\to\infty$. This problem can be closely related to an ergodic risk-sensitive stochastic control problem in the risk-averse case. Indeed, in our main theorem, we relate the former problem concerning the asymptotics for risk minimization to the latter as its dual. As a result, we obtain an expression of the limit value of the probability as the Legendre transform of the value of the control problem, which is characterized as the solution to an H-J-B equation of ergodic type, in the case of a Markovian incomplete market model.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AAP781 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org