Research Group: PPRC Full-time Project: yes
Discuss with supervisor and/or admissions tutor
NOvA is an experiment based in the US that aims to measure neutrino and antineutrino oscillations to better understand the origin of the universe. T2K is a competing experiment based in Japan. The two experiments are highly complementary, the different neutrino energies (2GeV vs 0.6GeV) make them sensitive to different interaction processes, and the different baselines (810km vs 295km) allow the matter effect to play a different role for each of them. Exploiting the complementarity between the two experiments, the two collaborations are developing a joint analysis to maximise the potential reach of currently available data. The biggest challenge of this analysis is understanding the neutrino interaction model differences between the two experiments , and studying the underlying correlations and resulting systematic uncertainties. This project offers the opportunity to be part of a joint effort between two competitive experiments, this will provide the most stringent constraint on the neutrino oscillations parameters, and if nature allows it, we will learn whether neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate in the same way.
The student is encouraged to spend one year at Fermilab, near Chicago, Illinois, during the course of their PhD. Some knowledge of C++ and statistics is desirable.
SPCS Academics: Linda Cremonesi