[time-nuts] Neutrino timing

Javier Serrano javier.serrano.pareja at gmail.com
Sun Oct 30 19:21:06 UTC 2011


On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 8:39 PM, WarrenS <warrensjmail-one at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have a more basic time-nut question.  Why is it a problem at all?
> How can the time uncertainty between two known and fixed locations be that
> large?

Hi, sorry I am not checking my non-CERN account very often these days.
I do not know the MINOS timing system at all. I can only speak for the
CERN-LNGS system. I guess the 70 ns refers to short-term noise, which
could be solved by a number of means people in this list know well. We
chose a traditional common view arrangement. There is only one thing
I'd like to point out in this list: the original goal of both the
MINOS and OPERA experiments was *not* to measure the neutrino time of
flight. That measurement just turned out to be possible with the
available infrastructure and some extra effort in the CERN-LNGS case.
These experiments were designed to study neutrino oscillations, i.e.
the mechanism whereby a neutrino of one type (electron, muon or tau)
turns into a neutrino of another type. In principle, for such
experiments, one only needs timing to make sure the neutrinos detected
on the far end have a very good chance of coming from your controlled
source and not from the Sun or other sources. This can be done without
much regard to high precision. Some 100 ns are OK. If neutrino
time-of-flight had been the original goal of these experiments, quite
a number of things would have been done differently from the start. I
am very happy to see the MINOS people are contacting the right
specialists. We are very eager to see results from an independent
experiment!

Cheers,

Javier



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