Alec Aivazis edited results.tex  almost 10 years ago

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\subsection{Background Estimation}  The goal of NOV$\nu$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.   Since the Near Detector (ND) is so close to the NuMI beam, it measures the particle before it has had a chance to oscillate or interact with other matter, providing an idea of what results are reasonable in the Far Detector (FD). The data recorded by the ND is separated into 4 different "channels" that are treated seprately. These channels are are:  muon neutrinos, charged interactions, neutral interactions, and neutral interactions with small $\nu_{e}$ behavior. Muon neutrinos travel much farther in the detector than electron, making them considerably easier to detect. See figure \ref{fig:tracks} for more details. From this, its clear that charged intereactions do not make up a large amount of the background measurements. The largest source is from neutral currents whose hadronic showers are occasionally misidentified as an electromagnetic shower similar to that of a muon neutrino \cite{Sachdev_2013}.