Search for the disappearance of muon antineutrinos in the NuMI neutrino beam

Abstract

We report constraints on antineutrino oscillation parameters that were obtained by using the two MINOS detectors to measure the 7% muon antineutrino component of the NuMI neutrino beam. In the Far Detector, we select 130 events in the charged-current muon antineutrino sample, compared to a prediction of 136.4±11.7(stat)+10.2−8.9(syst) events under the assumption |Δm⎯⎯⎯2|=2.32×10−3 eV2, sin2(2θ⎯⎯)=1.0. Assuming no oscillations occur at the Near Detector baseline, a fit to the two-flavor oscillation approximation constrains |Δm⎯⎯⎯2|<3.37×10−3 eV2 at the 90% confidence level with sin2(2θ⎯⎯)=1.0.