Honors College Thesis
 

Data driven study of neutron response in Minerva using quasielastic neutrino scattering

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/honors_college_theses/bv73c502p

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  • Understanding how particles behave in detectors is a critical part of analyzing data from neutrino experiments. There are methods in place to track charged particles in scintillator material, but neutral particles such as neutrons are more difficult to characterize. The purpose of this project was to assess and calibrate methods for predicting neutron behavior in quasielastic antineutrino scattering (QE) events in the Minerva detector. Here, relativistic kinematics for fully elastic scattering were used to develop a kinematic model that could predict the properties of outgoing neutrons using known muon behavior. These kinematic neutrons compared first to neutrons in Monte Carlo simulations, and then disassociated energy ``blobs'' reconstructed from simulated data that were hypothesized represent neutron energy deposition. In selected events (QE selection efficiency = 49%, neutron detection efficiency = 3.1%) kinematic neutrons predict relative blob position with an average angular error of 20 degrees but only poorly track blob energy trends. Therefore the kinematic neutron model cannot be applied to neutron detection in real data until further calibrations are developed for the kinematics equations. Key Words: Neutrino, Minerva, Computational, Physics
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