Measurement of the neutrino oscillation parameters by NOvA

Using a beam made (mainly) by muon neutrinos traveling through the earth, the NOvA Experiment looks for the appearance of electron neutrinos, a transformation explained by the quantum-mechanical phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. NOvA uses two neutrino detectors located 14.6 mrad off-axis from the main beam direction. The first (Near) detector stands at a distance of 1 km from the neutrino source, while the second (Far) one is at 810 km. Traveling from the Near Detector to the Far Detector, muon neutrinos can morph into electron neutrinos with a probability depending upon the parameters and sin2 θ 23, among others. By comparing the observed number of νµ and νe events at the Far Detector with the expected number of events predicted by a 3-neutrino oscillation model, NOvA is able to measure these parameters and help to improve our understanding about neutrinos. After a brief introduction to the physics of neutrinos and a presentation of the experiment, in this talk the most recent results obtained by NOvA through the study of muon neutrino oscillations νµ → νµ and νµ → νe , are shown. The oscillation parameters are found to be and sin2 θ 23 = 0.56.