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Browsing by Author "Doyle, Derek, author"

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    A measurement of the double-differential electron antineutrino charged-current inclusive cross section in the NOvA near detector
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Doyle, Derek, author; Buchanan, Norm, advisor; Gelfand, Martin, committee member; Harton, John, committee member; Norman, Andrew, committee member; Pouchet, Louis-Noël, committee member
    The neutrino is a fundamental particle of the universe that was first hypothesized in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli to explain the observed energy distribution of outgoing electrons produced from beta-decay. Since then, it has been discovered that there are at least three types, or flavors, of neutrinos and that they oscillate between these flavors as they travel through space and time. This discovery proved that neutrinos have a non-zero mass and positioned neutrino oscillations to provide a window into understanding the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Principle to all neutrino measurements is an accurate and robust interaction model over a large range of energies, and measurements to support the model. Of particular importance to the NuMI Off-axis νe Appearance (NOvA) neutrino oscillation experiment is the energy range from 1 to 10 GeV, where Quasi-Elastic (QE), Meson-Exchange Current (MEC), and Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) interactions all contribute significantly. Using neutrinos from the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beam and the NOvA near detector, the first double-differential electron antineutrino charged-current inclusive cross section is measured and compared to various interaction models implemented within the genie Generator framework, version 3. Good agreement is observed between measurement and a genie model tuned to NOvA data.
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    Accelerating NOvA's Feldman-Cousins procedure using high performance computing platforms
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2019) Doyle, Derek, author; Buchanan, Norm, advisor; Harton, John, committee member; Pouchet, Loius-Noël, committee member
    In order to assess the compatibility between models containing physically constrained parameters and small-signal data, uncertainties often must be calculated by Monte Carlo simulation to account for non-normally distributed errors. This is the case for neutrino oscillation experiments, where neutrino-matter weak interactions are rare and beam intensity at the far site is low. The NuMI Off-axis νe Appearance (NOvA) collaboration attempts to measure the parameters governing neutrino oscillations within the PMNS oscillation model by comparing model predictions to a small data set of neutrino interactions. To account for non-normality, NOvA uses the computationally intensive Feldman-Cousins (FC) procedure, which involves fitting thousands of independent pseudoexperiments to generate empirical distribution functions that are used to calculate the significance of observations. I, along with collaborators on NOvA and Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing: High Energy Physics Data Analytics (SciDAC-4) collaborations, have implemented the FC procedure utilizing the High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC). With this implementation, we have successfully processed NOvA's complete FC corrections for our recent neutrino + antineutrino appearance analysis in 36 hours: a speedup factor of 50 as compared to the methods used in previous analyses.