Academics: Dr Xianguo Lu
Students: Mr Komninos-John Plows
MINERvA, or Main INjector ExpeRiment for v-A, at Fermilab is an experiment dedicated to the study of neutrino-nucleus interactions in the GeV regime. Its goal is to illustrate the interplay between hadronic and nuclear physics and measure intranuclear dynamics that are crucial for the present and future neutrino oscillation measurements. Our results have shown that neutrino interactions are complex phenomena which challenge many of the popular theoretical descriptions.
MINERvA's analysis of the Low-Energy data—the neutrino beam flux peaks at about 3 GeV with most of the rate between 1-6 GeV—has come to a conclusion (see review article). Recently, MINERvA completed its physics run with the Medium-Energy (flux peak at 6 GeV) beam. The experiment received a total of 12×1020 protons on target in both neutrino and antineutrino mode running, which allows for a new level of statistical precision in neutrino interaction measurements, both in comparisons of interaction channels on a range of nuclei and in expansion to kinematic phase space that has not been accessible in previous data sets.
The MINERvA group in the UK was first established in Oxford in 2016 and later extended to Warwick in 2021. It pioneers the measurements of transverse kinematic imbalance, or TKI, in neutrino-nucleus interactions. Highlights include Phys. Rev. D 102, 072007 (2020), Phys. Rev. D 101, 092001 (2020), and Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 022504 (2018) that systematically explore the potential of TKI in identifying the medium properties and interaction dynamics in exclusive processes.
Dr Xianguo Lu serves as Analysis Coordinator of MINERvA since 2020. He is a member of the Executive Committee (2020-) and the Speakers Committee (2019-). He was Convener of the Exclusive Neutrino Interaction Working Group (2019-2020) and the Reconstruction and Algorithms Working Group (2018-2019).