Alec Aivazis edited background.tex  almost 10 years ago

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\section{Results - Background \section{Results}  \subsection{Background  Estimation} The goal of NO$\nu$A is to distinguish electron neutrinos from the muon neutrinos in the beam; therefore, it is important to estimate the amount of background measurements and false positives expected in the data.  

This "Muon-Removed Charged Current" provides a channel that does not contain the main event to be measured by the detectors and provides a data-based way to determine which events would produced charged electromagnetic showers and be identified as an oscillated muon neutrino by the Far Detector even though the Near Detector did not measure it as a muon at the beginning. For an illusration of this technique, see figure \ref{fig:mrcc}.  \subsection{Recent Results}  On February 11, 2014 Fermilab announced that NO$\nu$A detected its first signal of a neutrino in the Far Detector, before the detector was finished being built. For the image of the detector track, see figure \ref{fig:results}. While it is too early to draw conclusions from the data, the highly specialized design of the detector arrangement\footnote{see sections \ref{sect:detectors} and \ref{sect:osc-theory} for more information} coupled with the power of ones ability to manipulate the data for higher resolution will give NO$\nu$A a very high level of sensitivity to the neutrino mass hierarchy.