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Abstract We report results of characterizing the response and light transport of wavelength-shifting (WLS) and scintillating-wavelength-shifting (Sci-WLS) fibers under irradiation by radioactive α, β, and γ sources. Light yield and light transmission were measured for the WLS fiber BCF-91A from Saint-Gobain and for a new Sci-WLS fiber EJ-160 from Eljen Technology. The two variants with different fluor mixtures, EJ-160I and EJ-160II, exhibited approximately five and seven times higher light yield than BCF-91A, respectively, while their attenuation lengths were 3.80 m for BCF-91A, 4.00 m for EJ-160I, and 2.50 m for EJ-160II. 

Abstract We report results of optical characterizations of new wavelength-shifting and scintillating-wavelength-shifting fibers EJ-182 and EJ-160 from Eljen Technology and compare them to the wavelength-shifting fiber BCF-91A from Saint-Gobain. The wavelength-dependence of attenuation was derived from spectral measurements confirming that the long attenuation length increases with wavelength, while short attenuation effects become less significant at longer wavelengths. The impact of the environmental refractive index was studied by immersing the EJ-160II fiber in water. Immersing the fiber in water reduced the overall light output and suppressed the short attenuation component, which can be explained by reduced light-collection efficiency due to the smaller refractive-index contrast between the fiber cladding and the surrounding medium. 

The flux of cosmic ray muons at the Earth’s surface exhibits seasonal variations due to changes in the temperature of the atmosphere affecting the production and decay of mesons in the upper atmosphere. Using 1473 live days of data collected by the NuMI Off-axis ${\nu }_e$Appearance (NOvA) Near Detector during 2018–2022, we studied the seasonal pattern in the multiple-muon event rate. The data confirm an anticorrelation between the multiple-muon event rate and effective atmospheric temperature, consistent across all the years of data. Previous analyses from MINOS and NOvA saw a similar anticorrelation but did not include an explanation. We find that this anticorrelation is driven by altitude–geometry effects as the average muon production height changes with the season. This has been studied with a CORSIKA cosmic ray simulation package by varying atmospheric parameters, and provides an explanation to a longstanding discrepancy between the seasonal phases of single and multiple-muon events. 

This Letter reports measurements of muon-neutrino disappearance and electron-neutrino appearance and the corresponding antineutrino processes between the two NOvA detectors in the NuMI neutrino beam. These measurements use a dataset with double the neutrino mode beam exposure that was previously analyzed, along with improved simulation and analysis techniques. A joint fit to these samples in the three-flavor paradigm results in the most precise single-experiment constraint on the atmospheric neutrino mass splitting, $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{32}^2=2.431_{-0.034}^{+0.036}(-2.479_{-0.036}^{+0.036})\times {10}^{-3}{\mathrm{eV}}^2$if the mass ordering is normal (inverted). In both orderings, a region close to maximal mixing with ${\sin }^2{\theta }_{23}=0.55_{-0.06}^{+0.02}$is preferred. The NOvA data show a mild preference for the normal mass ordering with a Bayes factor of 2.4 (corresponding to 70% of the posterior probability), indicating that the normal ordering is 2.4 times more probable than the inverted ordering. When incorporating a 2D $\mathrm{\Delta }{m}_{32}^2-{\sin }^{2}2{\theta }_{13}$constraint based on Daya Bay data, this preference strengthens to a Bayes factor of 6.6 (87%).