Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Campus Access Dissertation

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Sub-Department

Physics

First Advisor

Sanjib Mishra

Abstract

NOMAD (Neutrino Oscillation MAgnetic Detector) was a short baseline neutrino experiment conducted at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle physics) West Area Neutrino Facility (WANF) with a neutrino beam provided by the super proton synchrotron (SPS) accelerator. In this dissertation, we present a measurement of muon-neutrino induced quasi-elastic cross section and its axial-mass off an isoscalar target in the NOMAD detector. The incident neutrino energy in NOMAD experiment spans from 2.5 to 300 GeV. The measurement of cross-section is conducted in two seperate kinematic-based topology, two-track and one-track topologies, where a proton is not properly reconstructed. The QEL cross-section as a function of the incoming neutrino energy is consistent for the two different topologies, and within errors , constant as a function of the neutrino energy. We determine the energy-averaged cross-section.

From the shape-comparisons of kinematics of QEL-like events, the parameter of QEL axial mass is estimated. It is in good agreement with the result from the measurement of QEL cross-section. Using the chi-square of the shapes of four independent kienamtic variables between data and MC, we determine the axial mass.

The cross-section and the axial mass presented in this dissertation have the best statistical precision to date.

Rights

© 2010, Jae Jun Kim

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