Study of Neutrino Oscillations in the OPERA Experiment

TL;DR

The OPERA experiment aimed to directly detect neutrino oscillations by observing tau leptons produced in muon neutrino interactions, using a hybrid detector over several years of data collection.

Contribution

This study presents the first direct detection of neutrino oscillations in the $ u_{} o u_{ au}$ channel using a hybrid emulsion/lead detector with data from the CNGS beam.

Findings

Detection of tau leptons indicating $ u_{} o u_{ au}$ oscillations

Analysis of a large dataset from 2008-2012

Results on $ u_{} o u_{e}$ oscillation search

Abstract

The OPERA experiment has been designed to perform the first detection of neutrino oscillations in direct appearance mode in the $\nu_{\mu}\to\nu_{\tau}$ channel, through the detection of the tau lepton produced in charged current interaction on an event by event basis. The detector is hybrid, being made of an emulsion/lead target and of electronic detectors. It exploited the CNGS muon neutrino beam from CERN to Gran Sasso, 730 km from the source. Runs with CNGS neutrinos were successfully carried out from 2008 to 2012. We report on the large data sample analysed so far and give our results on the search for $\nu_{\mu}\to\nu_{\tau}$ and $\nu_{\mu}\to\nu_{e}$ oscillations.