Search for Electron Neutrino Appearance in MINOS
The MINOS Collaboration continues its search for $ν_e$ appearance in the NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) beam at Fermilab. Neutrinos in the beam interact in the Near Detector, located 1 km from the beam source, allowing us to characterize the backgrounds present in our analysis. In particular, we can estimate the number of $ν_e$ candidate events we expect to see in the Far Detector (735 km away, in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota) in the presence or absence of $ν_μ\rightarrow ν_e$ oscillation. Recent efforts to improve the sensitivity of the analysis, including upgrades to the event identification algorithm and fitting procedure, are discussed, and the latest results from the search are presented.
hep-ex↗