Observation of tau neutrino appearance in the CNGS beam with the OPERA experiment
Abstract
The OPERA experiment is searching for ν _μ rArr ν _tau oscillations in appearance mode, i.e., via the direct detection of tau leptons in ν _tau charged-current interactions. The evidence of ν _μ rArr ν _tau appearance has been previously reported with three ν _tau candidate events using a sub-sample of data from the 2008-2012 runs. We report here a fourth ν _tau candidate event, with the tau decaying into a hadron, found after adding the 2012 run events without any muon in the final state to the data sample. Given the number of analyzed events and the low background, ν _μ rArr ν _tau oscillations are established with a significance of 4.2σ.
- Publication:
-
Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics
- Pub Date:
- October 2014
- DOI:
- 10.1093/ptep/ptu132
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1407.3513
- Bibcode:
- 2014PTEP.2014j1C01O
- Keywords:
-
- C04;
- C32;
- High Energy Physics - Experiment
- E-Print:
- Submitted to Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (PTEP)