New Results from the MINOS Experiment

In this paper we present the latest results from the MINOS Experiment. This includes a new measurement of the atmospheric neutrino oscillation parameters based on 3.36 x 10^20 protons-on-target of data and a first analysis of neutral current events in the Far Detector. The prospects for nu-e appearance measurements in MINOS are also discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, for the Proceedings of the Neutrino 2008 Conference, Christchurch, N

Observation of muon neutrino disappearance with the MINOS detectors in the NuMI neutrino beam

This letter reports results from the MINOS experiment based on its initial exposure to neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. The rate and energy spectra of charged current muon neutrino interactions are compared in two detectors located along the beam axis at distances of 1 km and 735 km. With 1.27 x 10^{20} 120 GeV protons incident on the NuMI target, 215 events with energies below 30 GeV are observed at the Far Detector, compared to an expectation of 336 \pm 14.4 events. The data are consistent with muon neutrino disappearance via oscillation with |\Delta m^2_{23}| = 2.74^{+0.44}_{-0.26} x 10^{-3} eV^2/c^4 and sin^2(2\theta_{23}) > 0.87 (at 60% C.L.)

Charged Cosmic String Nucleation in de Sitter Space

We investigate the quantum nucleation of pairs of charged circular cosmic strings in de Sitter space. By including self-gravity we obtain the classical potential energy barrier and compute the quantum mechanical tunneling probability in the semiclassical approximation. We also discuss the classical evolution of charged circular strings after their nucleation.Comment: 12 pages Latex + 3 figures (not included), Nordita 94/38