Date of Award

Fall 2024

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Physics and Astronomy

First Advisor

Roberto Petti

Abstract

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is a next-generation long- baseline neutrino experiment aimed at resolving mass hierarchy and the CP violation puzzle in the neutrino sector. Although neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the universe, their study is challenging due to their extremely low interaction cross sections. DUNE aims to overcome these challenges by sending a beam of muon (anti)neutrinos from Fermilab, located near Chicago, to the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota.

The experiment consists of a near detector (ND) complex at Fermilab, which mea- sures the composition of the unoscillated neutrino beam, and a far detector at SURF, which detects the oscillated neutrino beam. The ND complex consists of a detector called System for On-Axis Neutrino Detection as a beam monitoring device. SAND consists of a liquid argon (LAr) target followed by a low density tracker (STT) and an electromagnetic calorimeter (ECAL). The combination of carbon and CH2 (plastic) targets in the tracker region allows SAND to extract (anti) neutrino interactions on hydrogen, which is can be used for constraining the (anti) neutrino flux and studying nucleon form factors. Additionally, SAND also provides the opportunity to investi- gate nuclear effects.

This thesis focuses on the performance and optimization studies of the SAND detector.

Rights

© 2024, Nibir Talukdar

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