This book presents a major step forward in experimentally understanding the behavior of muon neutrinos and antineutrinos. Apart from providing the world’s first measurement of these interactions in a mostly unexplored energy region, the data presented advances the neutrino community’s preparedness to search for an asymmetry between matter and anti-matter that may very well provide the physical mechanism for the existence of our universe. The details of these measurements are preceded by brief summaries of the history of the neutrino, the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, and a description of their interactions. Also provided are details of the experimental setup for the measurements and the muon antineutrino cross-section measurement which motivates the need for dedicated in situ background constraints. The world’s first measurement of the neutrino component of an antineutrino beam using a non-magnetized detector, as well as other crucial background constraints, are also presented in the book. By exploiting correlated systematic uncertainties, combined measurements of the muon neutrino and antineutrino cross sections described in the book maximize the precision of the extracted information from both results.

​This thesis represents the first double differential measurement of quasi-elastic anti-neutrino scattering in the few GeV range--a region of substantial theoretical and experimental interest as it is the kinematic region where studies of charge-parity (CP) violation in the neutrino sector most require precise understanding of the differences between anti-neutrino and neutrino scatter. This dissertation also presents total antineutrino-scintillator quasi-elastic cross sections as a function of energy, which is then compared to measurements from previous experiments. Next-generation neutrino oscillation experiments, such as DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande, hope to measure CP violation in the lepton sector. In order to do this, they must dramatically reduce their current levels of uncertainty, particularly those due to neutrino-nucleus interaction models. As CP violation is a measure of the difference between the oscillation properties of neutrinos and antineutrinos, data about how the less-studied antineutrinos interact is especially valuable. The measurement described herewith determines the nuclear and instrumental effects that must be understood to undertake precision neutrino physics. As well as being useful to help reduce oscillation experiments' uncertainty, this data can also be used to study the prevalence of various correlation and final-state interaction effects within the nucleus. In addition to being a substantial scientific advance, this thesis also serves as an outstanding introduction to the field of experimental neutrino physics for future students.

The study of neutrinos and their interaction with matter has made many important contributions to our present knowledge of physics. This advanced text introduces neutrino physics and presents a theoretical framework for describing relativistic particles. It gives a pedagogical description of the neutrino, its properties, the standard model of electroweak interactions, and neutrino scattering from leptons and nucleons. Focusing on the role of nuclear effects, the discussion extends to various processes of quasielastic, inelastic, and deep inelastic scattering from nucleons and nuclei. Neutrino sources, detection and oscillation, along with the role of neutrinos in astrophysics and motivation for the need of physics beyond the standard model are discussed in detail. This topical book will stimulate new ideas and avenues for research, and will form a valuable resource for advanced students and researchers working in the field of neutrino physics.

This volume covers invited papers presented during the La Rábida 2015 International Scientific Meeting on Nuclear Physics, which can be considered heir of a well known series of triennial international summer schools on Nuclear Physics organized from 1982 till 2003 by the Basic Nuclear Physics group in the University of Sevilla. The La Rábida 2015 meeting offered to graduate students and young researchers a broad view of the field of Nuclear Physics. The first invited speaker presented the state-of-the-art of Relativistic Mean Field calculations. The second set of notes covers selected topics in gamma ray spectroscopy with exotic nuclei. The third speaker presented an introduction to the subject of severe accidents in nuclear power plants. In the fourth set of notes, the author illustrated how to use laser spectroscopy to determine very important observables of atomic nuclei. The fifth speaker devoted its notes to explain several aspects of neutrino physics. Finally, the sixth speaker presented an overview of nuclear medicine and radiodiagnostic. In addition to this, the inclusion of the posters and seminars presented by the students gives a fresh and ample perspective on the many different problems of interest nowadays for the Nuclear Physics community.

In this thesis the author contributes to the analysis of neutrino beam data collected between 2010 and 2013 to identify νμ→νe events at the Super-Kamiokande detector. In particular, the author improves the pion–nucleus interaction uncertainty, which is one of the dominant systematic error sources in T2K neutrino oscillation measurement. In the thesis, the measurement of νμ→νe oscillation in the T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) experiment is presented and a new constraint on δCP is obtained. This measurement and the analysis establish, at greater than 5σ significance, the observation of νμ→νe oscillation for the first time in the world. Combining the T2K νμ→νe oscillation measurement with the latest findings on oscillation parameters including the world average value of θ13 from reactor experiments, the constraint on the value of δCP at the 90% confidence level is obtained. This constraint on δCP is an important step towards the discovery of CP violation in the lepton sector.

This thesis explores the electron-neutrino and antineutrino cross section on argon using the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber detector. With only a handful of electron neutrino cross section measurements in the hundred MeV to GeV range to date and only one of them on argon as the target nucleus: the result from the ArgoNeuT experiment, there is a need for new, large statistics, electron-neutrino cross section measurements. The precise knowledge of the electron neutrino cross section is fundamental for tests of lepton universality, making meaningful interpretations of neutrino oscillations and beyond the Standard Model search experiments involving electron neutrinos. Moreover, the appearance of electron neutrinos in a beam of predominantly muon neutrinos is the key signature in searches for sterile neutrinos in short-baseline experiments and measurements of Charge-Parity violation in long-baseline oscillation experiments. The measurements in this thesis utilize the NuMI neutrino beamline which is highly off-axis to the MicroBooNE detector but provides a rich source of electron-neutrinos. Critical to the measurement of the cross section is a detailed understanding of the flux of neutrinos at MicroBooNE and the uncertainties associated with it. The neutrino flux prediction tools used for the on-axis NuMI experiments are described and studied in detail for their implementation in the case of MicroBooNE. These tools will form the foundation for many future measurements using the NuMI beam at MicroBooNE. With the use of argon as a target for studying neutrino interactions, the large size of the nucleus introduces nuclear effects which impact the kinematics and multiplicities of the particles produced in the initial interaction. Such effects are complicated to model and are currently an active area of research with various models and neutrino generators available. The measurements in this thesis compare the electron-neutrino argon cross section to several neutrino generators with differing physics models. These comparisons provide important information in the modelling of neutrino interactions with nuclei such as argon. The target audience for this thesis is aimed at particle physics graduate students, particularly in the field of neutrino physics working with noble element time-projection chambers.

This thesis details significant improvements in the understanding of the nuclear EMC effect and nuclear shadowing in neutrino physics, and makes substantial comparisons with electron scattering physics. Specifically, it includes the first systematic study of the EMC ratios of carbon, iron and lead to plastic scintillator of neutrinos. The analysis presented provides the best evidence to date that the EMC effect is similar between electrons and neutrinos within the sensitivity of the data. Nuclear shadowing is measured systematically for the first time with neutrinos. In contrast with the data on the EMC effect, the data on nuclear shadowing support the conclusion that nuclear shadowing may be stronger for neutrinos than it is for electrons. This conclusion points to interesting new nuclear physics.