The study of Fermilab long-baseline neutrino fluxes and NA61/SHINE (CERN) 60 GeV pion incident data

The information of the neutrino flux generated by the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beamlines is very important to understand the neutrino interaction and neutrino oscillation measurements at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The current NuMI Off-axis v_e Appearance (NOvA) experiment uses the NuMI beamline, and the future Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will use the LBNF beamline. In the NuMI and LBNF neutrino beamlines, the largest uncertainty on the produced neutrino flux arises from the hadronic cascade model. DUNE and NOvA have already utilized the external hadron production data to constrain the hadronic models in their simulations and predict the neutrino flux at their detectors with better reliability. Cross-section measurements from NA49 (CERN) have been implemented for proton interactions, and their impact reduces the neutrino flux uncertainty significantly. In addition, it provides the precise neutrino flux prediction in the energy region of one to tens of GeV.

In this thesis, we will show the results of neutrino flux predictions for the NuMI off-axis location with NuMI present target, and also for the future experiment DUNE. The hadron production experiments are explained briefly, and then the hadron production uncertainties for the neutrino flux at DUNE ND and NOvA ND locations are presented. In particular, we compare the recently released NA61 60 GeV incident pion data, and FTFP BERT and QGSP BERT of pion incidents for the G4LBNF current version. Finally, we show the interpolated NA61 data, and the interpolated NA61 data conversion from n(p;θ) to < f (x_F; p_T) >. We also show the relevant phase spaces of pion production from pion incident for both FTFP BERT and QGSP BERT for G4LBNF current version as well as for the DUNE ND location.