Charged Pion semi inclusive charged current cross section measurement in the NOvA experiment at Fermiilab

Abstract

NOvA is a long baseline experiment at Fermilab designed to study neutrino flavor oscillations from muon to electron neutrinos. The NOvA experiment uses the NuMI beam facility at Fermilab for getting a 99% pure beam of muon neutrinos. The NOvA near detector observes an intense rate of neutrino interactions providing an excellent opportunity to study neutrino nucleus interactions. Neutrino-nucleus cross-section measurements play an instrumental role in improving the understanding of neutrino oscillations. The pion production processes are of great interest as they act as a source of background and systematic uncertainties in the neutrino oscillations study because pions can mimic an electron in the final state. In this thesis, the charged current charged pion production cross-section induced by and#957;and#956; interactions in the NOvA Near Detector has been reported. Studies of the NuMI neutrino beam simulation are also presented. The simulation results for neutrino flux are presented for the NOvA standard target along with the modified length of the target. newline