NOvA

Understanding the mystery of neutrino particles

The Innovation Platform investigates how the NOvA experiment at Fermilab is working to determine the role of mysterious neutrinos. To find out more about the NOvA experiment’s goals and recent progress, Innovation Platform recently spoke to NOvA co-spokespersons Patricia Vahle, Professor of Physics at William & Mary, and scientist Alex Himmel from Fermilab.

NOvA collaboration

The international collaboration presented their first results with new data in four years, featuring a new low-energy sample of electron neutrinos and a dataset doubled in size.

From Phys.org, August 3, 2022: Fermilab’s NOvA experiment reports analysis on oscillation data delivering some of the most accurate estimates to date describing neutrino oscillations and providing important hints on two important aspects of neutrino physics—the ordering of neutrino masses and the degree of charge-parity (CP) violation. These results set the stage for the next generation of “long-baseline” experiments, like Hyper-K and DUNE, which will dramatically boost our ability to probe elusive aspects of neutrino physics.

From the Universities Research Association: Michael Dolce, a physics doctoral candidate at Tufts University, was awarded a stipend as part of the URA’s Fall 2020 Visiting Scholars Program to compare data collected between NOvA’s Near and Far detector. While on the VSP grant, Dolce worked alongside his sponsor Dr. Louise Suter, a NOvA expert and Fermilab scientist who provided him a direct line to the laboratory and valuable guidance.

Three factoid cards, which look similar to playing cards or a baseball card, appear on a background of stars in a night sky (or in outer space) in a cartoon rendering. On each of the cards is a circle adjusted its sunglasses, presumably each a type of neutrino. Underneath these images on the cards are scribbles representing text and a question mark. In the upper left corner, the abbreviations for electron neutrino, a muon neutrino or a tau neutrino appear.

Figuring out which type of neutrino is heaviest, or solving the puzzle of neutrino mass hierarchy, would be a huge leap in our understanding of both neutrinos and the physics that govern our universe. The NoVA experiment or DUNE could help physicists do just that.

NOvA far detector

The NOvA experiment, best known for its measurements of neutrino oscillations using particle beams from Fermilab accelerators, has been turning its attention to measurements of cosmic phenomena. In a series of results, NOvA reports on neutrinos from supernovae, gravitational-wave events from black hole mergers, muons from cosmic rays, and its search for the elusive monopole.

From Sci News, Oct. 2, 2020: A research team from four national laboratories, including Fermilab and Argonne, have undertaken work at two Fermilab neutrino experiments — MiniBooNE and NOvA — to construct a model of how neutrinos interact with atomic nuclei. This knowledge is essential to unravel an even bigger mystery: why during their journey through space or matter neutrinos magically morph from one into another of three possible types or flavors.