The NOvA Test Beam Experiment

Abstract

aThe motivation for the NOvA test beam project is to understand a number of limiting factors that impinges the NOvA's analyses. These factors include the detector’s hadronic and electromagnetic shower response, light yield and optical transportation, as well as discrepancies between data and MC modeling of the detector. In addition, the test beam setup will collect data to build a large libraries of particle interactions at well-known energies, which would later become a useful input in the development of better data driven PID algorithms for NOvA's analyses. The main component of the experiment - two 2$\times$2$\times$32 blocks, filled with NOvA liquid scintillator - is placed along the MC7 beamline to study the interaction with beam particles. The tertiary beam composes primarily of protons and pions as well as a discernible contribution from electrons, muons and kaons, all within a momentum range from 0.3 to 2 GeV$/c$. The PID and kinematics of beam particles will be determined by the auxiliary detectors including four MWPCs, two TOFs and a CO$_2$ gas Cherenkov counter. In this poster, recent status on beamline instrumentation, data acquisition, simulation, momentum reconstruction and PID will be presented. Also, implications for the neutrino oscillation measurements will be discussed.