The OPERA experiment was designed to search for $ u_{mu} rightarrow u_{tau}$ oscillations in appearance mode, i.e. by detecting the $tau$-leptons produced in charged current $ u_{tau}$ interactions. The experiment took data from 2008 to 2012 in the
CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso beam. The observation of $ u_{mu} rightarrow u_{tau}$ appearance, achieved with four candidate events in a sub-sample of the data, was previously reported. In this paper, a fifth $ u_{tau}$ candidate event, found in an enlarged data sample, is described. Together with a further reduction of the expected background, the candidate events detected so far allow assessing the discovery of $ u_{mu}rightarrow u_{tau}$ oscillations in appearance mode with a significance larger than 5 $sigma$.
The OPERA experiment, exposed to the CERN to Gran Sasso $ u_mu$ beam, collected data from 2008 to 2012. Four oscillated $ u_tau$ Charged Current interaction candidates have been detected in appearance mode, which are consistent with $ u_mu to u_tau$
oscillations at the atmospheric $Delta m^2$ within the standard three-neutrino framework. In this paper, the OPERA $ u_tau$ appearance results are used to derive limits on the mixing parameters of a massive sterile neutrino.
The OPERA experiment is searching for nu_mu -> nu_tau oscillations in appearance mode i.e. via the direct detection of tau leptons in nu_tau charged current interactions. The evidence of nu_mu -> nu_tau appearance has been previously reported with th
ree nu_tau candidate events using a sub-sample of data from the 2008-2012 runs. We report here a fourth nu_tau candidate event, with the tau decaying into a hadron, found after adding the 2012 run events without any muon in the final state to the data sample. Given the number of analysed events and the low background, nu_mu -> nu_tau oscillations are established with a significance of 4.2sigma.
The OPERA neutrino experiment is designed to perform the first observation of neutrino oscillations in direct appearance mode in the $ u_mu to u_tau$ channel, via the detection of the $tau$-leptons created in charged current $ u_tau$ interactions. T
he detector, located in the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory, consists of an emulsion/lead target with an average mass of about 1.2 kt, complemented by electronic detectors. It is exposed to the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso beam, with a baseline of 730 km and a mean energy of 17 GeV. The observation of the first $ u_tau$ candidate event and the analysis of the 2008-2009 neutrino sample have been reported in previous publications. This work describes substantial improvements in the analysis and in the evaluation of the detection efficiencies and backgrounds using new simulation tools. The analysis is extended to a sub-sample of 2010 and 2011 data, resulting from an electronic detector-based pre-selection, in which an additional $ u_tau$ candidate has been observed. The significance of the two events in terms of a $ u_mu to u_tau$ oscillation signal is of 2.40 $sigma$.
A first result of the search for umu $rightarrow$ ue oscillations in the OPERA experiment, located at the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory, is presented. The experiment looked for the appearance of ue in the CNGS neutrino beam using the data coll
ected in 2008 and 2009. Data are compatible with the non-oscillation hypothesis in the three-flavour mixing model. A further analysis of the same data constrains the non-standard oscillation parameters $theta_{new}$ and $Delta m^2_{new}$ suggested by the LSND and MiniBooNE experiments. For large $Delta m^{2}_{new}$ values ($>$0.1 eV$^{2}$), the OPERA 90% C.L. upper limit on sin$^{2}(2theta_{new})$ based on a Bayesian statistical method reaches the value $7.2 times 10^{-3}$.
The OPERA detector at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory (LNGS) was used to measure the atmospheric muon charge ratio in the TeV energy region. We analyzed 403069 atmospheric muons corresponding to 113.4 days of livetime during the 2008 CNGS run.
We computed separately the muon charge ratio for single and for multiple muon events in order to select different energy regions of the primary cosmic ray spectrum and to test the charge ratio dependence on the primary composition. The measured charge ratio values were corrected taking into account the charge-misidentification errors. Data have also been grouped in five bins of the vertical surface energy. A fit to a simplified model of muon production in the atmosphere allowed the determination of the pion and kaon charge ratios weighted by the cosmic ray energy spectrum.
