Research


NOνA Experiment

The NuMI Off-Axis νe Appearance project is a next-generation long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, currently under construction at Fermilab and Minnesota. It will use a totally active liquid scintillator detector, positioned off the NuMI neutrino beam axis, to look for oscillations into electron neutrinos with unprecedented precision.

Running a NuMI facility upgraded to 700 kW of beam power in neutrino and antineutrino modes, on an 810 km long baseline, NOνA is sensitive to the neutrino mass hierarchy and will pioneer searches for CP violation in the leptonic sector.

NOνA Research Highlights

  • Since 2012 - Co-leader of the NOνA Test Beam effort - Planning a test beam run using a scaled down version of the NOνA detectors and beams of particles wtih known momenta at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility (FTBF)
  • Since 2012 - Co-coordinator of the NOνA Detector Simulations Group - In charge of development and validation of simulated neutrino interactions in the NOνA detectors.
  • 2008-2010 - Member of the NOνA Calibration Committee - Responsible for determining the calibration requirements for the NOνA νe analysis, the primary analysis to be undertaken by NOνA.
  • 2009-2011 - NOνA Track Reconstruction - Developer of a Hough transform-based track reconstruction package.

MINOS/MINOS+ Experiment

The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search experiment uses the NuMI neutrino beam and two detectors to make high precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters.
The neutrino beam, created from collisions of 120 GeV protons accelerated by Fermilab's Main Injector, is measured at ~1 km from production with a 1 kton near detector at Fermilab, and again 735 km away with a large 5.4 kton far detector, located underground at the Soudan mine, in northern Minnesota.

By looking for differences in neutrino flavor composition between the near and far measurements, MINOS has solidly established the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, searched for muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations, and explored the possibility of oscillations into a new type of sterile neutrinos.

MINOS Research Highlights

  • 2013-2014 - Physics Analysis Coordinator of the MINOS/MINOS+ Experiment - Directed the analysis efforts of the experiments presented at the Neutrino 2014 conference in Boston, MA, available here.
  • 2011-2012 - Deputy Physics Analysis Coordinator of the MINOS Experiment - Co-responsible for directing the analysis efforts of the experiment and coordinating the publication of analysis results.
  • 2010 - 2013 - Co-convener of the MINOS Disappearance Analysis Group - The analysis is concerned with measuring the oscillation parameters of antineutrinos using data from a dedicated NuMI antineutrino run, and comparing the neutrino and antineutrino oscillation parameters. I presented the latest results of the analysis in August 2011 at a Wine and Cheese seminar at Fermilab. The first results obtained in 2010 were published in Phys. Rev. Letters and are publicly available in the arXiv.
  • 2008-2011 - Co-convener of the MINOS Neutral Current Analysis Group - The Group is responsible for the MINOS search for sterile neutrinos by looking for differences between the neutral current neutrino spectrum in the near and far detectors. Latest results were published in Phys. Rev. Letters and are publicly available in the arXiv.
  • 2007-2009 - MINOS Batch Processing Coordinator - Responsible for ensuring that MINOS Data and Monte Carlo samples are consistently processed through standardized reconstruction using Fermilab's computing resources and made available to the MINOS Collaboration in a timely manner. More information available here.
  • 2005 - Thesis on the topic "Studies of Nu-mu to Nu-e Oscillation Appearance in the MINOS Experiment" - Full text available here.

LBNE Project

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment has as its main goal to search for CP violation in the leptonic sector by measuring neutrino oscillations with unprecedented precision. It will use a new neutrino beam with 1.2 MW power created at Fermilab, and a 34 kton liquid argon time-projection chamber as far detector, located 1300 km away at the Homestake mine. LBNE will be constructed over the next decade and is projected to start taking data around 2025.

LBNE Research Highlights

Publications
© Alex Sousa 2014