Precision Neutrino Studies with MINOS and MINERvA

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The College of William and Mary is participating in the MINERvA experiment at Fermilab, whose scientific program consists of high rate studies of excusive final states in neutrino scattering, of the transition between the perturbative and the non-perturbative QCD regime in such interactions, and of the axial current in the elastic, deep inelastic and off-forward regimes. MINERvA proposes to carry out this program on various nuclei to systematically probe neutrino-induced nuclear effects, which has important impact for other ongoing and future neutrino experiments. The MINERvA detector has numerous scintillation elements, an aspect of the program in which the William and Mary group will play a management role, as well as having important responsibilities for detector production, assembly and characterization. The group will produce all the scintillator assemblies for the MINERvA Tracking Prototype and half of the assemblies for the main MINERvA detector. The William group will also participate extensively in data collection with the test beam and analysis of the test beam data. The research program includes mentors and students at all stages in the physicist development pipeline. The broader impact for this research is achieved by integrating research with undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and extending this approach to incorporating science teachers in the MINERvA research program.