Evidence for νμ→ντ appearance in the CNGS neutrino beam with the OPERA experiment


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Agafonova N., Aleksandrov A., Anokhina A., Aoki S., Ariga A., Ariga T., ...Daha Fazla

Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, cilt.89, sa.5, 2014 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

Özet

The OPERA experiment is designed to search for νμ→ντ oscillations in appearance mode, i.e., through the direct observation of the τ lepton in ντ-charged current interactions. The experiment has taken data for five years, since 2008, with the CERN Neutrino to Gran Sasso beam. Previously, two ντ candidates with a τ decaying into hadrons were observed in a subsample of data of the 2008-2011 runs. Here we report the observation of a third ντ candidate in the τ-→μ- decay channel coming from the analysis of a subsample of the 2012 run. Taking into account the estimated background, the absence of νμ→ντ oscillations is excluded at the 3.4σ level. © 2014 American Physical Society.