Senior Thesis
N-16 Capture to Differentiate between Neutrinos and Antineutrinos
in Super-Kamiokande
Ashley Jones
May 2011
Thesis Committee: Kate Scholberg (Advisor), Stephen Teitsworth, Chris Walter, Henry Greenside
ABSTRACT:
Super-Kamiokande is the world's largest water Cherenkov detector located in the Mozumi mine within the Gifu Prefecture of Japan. One of its major uses is to study the oscillation of atmospheric neutrinos at energies around one GeV. Without a magnetic field, the difference between neutrinos and antineutrinos is not apparent. The difference can be observed, however, through the decay of nitrogen-16. Negative muons capture on oxygen nuclei, and oxygen-16 becomes nitrogen-16. Nitrogen-16 then beta decays
with a half life of 7.13 seconds and energy within 5-10 MeV. Looking for this type of decay after low energy events within detector samples can signify neutrino events as opposed to antineutrino events.
This thesis reports on a search for neutrino candidate events using N-16 decay. The official Super-Kamiokande solar neutrino sample was used to create a list of possible muon neutrino candidates. The grouping of the candidates into neutrinos and antineutrinos could be useful for future oscillation studies and targeting possible differences between neutrinos and antineutrinos. It could be used to test models of CPT violation.
Here is the complete thesis in PDF: Jones Thesis