The Preparation Status and Plan for the Next Physics Run of the NINJA Experiment

Abstract

The NINJA experiment aims to precisely measure neutrino-nucleus interactions using a nuclear emulsion detector to reduce systematic errors in neutrino oscillation experiments. The nuclear emulsion has a sub-micron positional resolution, enabling the detection of low-momentum charged particles such as protons with a threshold of 200 MeV/c. In the NINJA experiment, a muon detector placed downstream of the emulsion detector is used to identify muons from $ν_μ$ charged-current interactions. The majority of the tracks accumulated in the nuclear emulsion are from cosmic rays. Although the emulsion detector provides highly accurate positional information, it lacks timing information. Therefore, the positional resolution of the muon detector is not enough to identify neutrino interaction tracks that match between the muon detector and the emulsion detector from the enormous background of cosmic rays recorded in the emulsion detector. To address this, a scintillation tracker is used to provide both timing and positional information for the tracks. The NINJA experiment is planning a third physics run with about 130 kg water target from the autumn of 2025 to the spring of 2026. Since the target mass is larger than previous runs, a larger scintillation tracker covering 1.3 m $\times$ 1.4 m is needed. We are developing a newly designed scintillation tracker, consisting of a monolithic plastic scintillator plane including scatterers. In this paper, we will show the preparation status and plan for the next physics run, focusing particularly on the development of the new scintillation tracker.