Detection of atmospheric neutrinos in the HPW experiment
Abstract
A search was undertaken to study upward going neutrinos of atmospheric origin that penetrated the earth and reached the HPW large underground water Cerenkov detector. This is a 702 metric ton detector instrumented with a volume array of 704 photomultiplier tubes that was originally built by the Harvard-Purdue-Wisconsin collaboration for the study of nucleon decay. Data were analysed for a period of 0.1397 years. Three candidate events were found for neutrinos interacting inside the volume of the detector corresponding to a total rate of 168 $\pm$ 56 atmospheric neutrinos/kT/yr with energies above 300 MeV. Seven candidate events were found for penetrating upward going $\nu\sb\mu$-induced muons corresponding to a flux of (3.37 $\pm$ 0.48) $\times$ 10$\sp{13}$ muons/sec/cm$\sp2$/sr with energies above 300 MeV.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Gaidos, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Particle physics
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