Measurement of Neutrino Oscillations with the MINOS Detectors in the NuMI Beam

TL;DR

This paper presents new MINOS experiment results confirming neutrino oscillations with specific parameters, strongly disfavoring alternative explanations like decay and decoherence, based on two years of muon neutrino data from Fermilab.

Contribution

First measurement of neutrino oscillation parameters using MINOS detectors with two-year NuMI beam data, providing strong evidence for quantum mechanical oscillations.

Findings

Mass splitting | m^2|=(2.43\u00b1 0.13) imes10^{-3} eV^2

Mixing angle ^2(2)>0.90

Neutrino decay and decoherence explanations are disfavored at 3.7 and 5.7 sigma

Abstract

This letter reports new results from the MINOS experiment based on a two-year exposure to muon neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. Our data are consistent with quantum mechanical oscillations of neutrino flavor with mass splitting $|\Delta m^2|=(2.43\pm 0.13)\times10^{-3}$ eV$^2$ (68% confidence level) and mixing angle $\sin^2(2\theta)>0.90$ (90% confidence level). Our data disfavor two alternative explanations for the disappearance of neutrinos in flight, namely neutrino decays into lighter particles and quantum decoherence of neutrinos, at the 3.7 and 5.7 standard deviation levels, respectively.