The NOνA experiment, the first 12 months of commissioning, operations and physics data

The NOνA experiment is a long baseline neutrino experiment designed to make precision measurements of the oscillation probabilities for νµ → νe and νµ → νµ for both neutrinos and anti-neutrinos. These measurements will provide new information on the neutrino mass hierarchy, improve our knowledge of whether θ23 is non-maximal and possibility provide information on the CP violating phase δCP of the PMNS neutrino mixing matrix. We present the observations of the first neutrino event in the NOνA far and near detectors along with data obtained during the first year of detector commissioning and operations. We use the data to demonstrate the detector’s ability to identify electron and muon neutrino events and to reject cosmic ray induced backgrounds at a level of 4 × 107:1. New estimates for the signal and background sensitivities of the NOνA experiment during the first year of full detector running are presented.