Search

Nuclear emulsion plates for studying elementary particle physics as well as cosmic ray physics are very powerful tracking tools with sub-micron spatial resolutions of charged particle trajectories. Even if gamma rays have to be detected, electron-positron pair tracks can provide precise information to reconstruct their direction and energy with high accuracy. Recent developments of emulsion analysis technology can digitally handle almost all tracks recorded in emulsion plates by using the Hyper Track Selector of the OPERA group at NAGOYA University. On the other hand, the potential of time resolutions have been equipped by emulsion multilayer shifter technology in the GRAINE (Gamma Ray Astro-Imager with Nuclear Emulsion) experiments, the aims of which are to detect cosmic gamma rays such as the Vela pulsar stellar object by precise emulsion tracking analysis and to study cosmic ray particle interactions and chemical compositions. In this paper, we focus on the subject of cosmic ray nuclei detection in the GRAINE balloon flight experiments launched at Alice Springs, Australia in May 2015.

We deepen the study of the so-called ``silver channel'' $\nu_e \to \nu_\tau$ \cite{Donini:2002rm} and of its relevance to solve some of the ambiguities that can arise in the simultaneous measurement of $(\theta_{13},\delta)$ at the Neutrino Factory by presenting in full detail the characteristics of the considered OPERA-like detector and the experimental treatment of the different backgrounds and signals. Furthermore, we perform a detailed study of the systematic errors associated both with the OPERA-like and the magnetized-iron detectors and their effects on the sensitivity. Finally, we also apply a refined statistical analysis of the simulated events based on the frequentist approach. We deepen the study of the so-called ``silver channel'' $\nu_e \to \nu_\tau$ \cite{Donini:2002rm} and of its relevance to solve some of the ambiguities that can arise in the simultaneous measurement of $(\theta_{13},\delta)$ at the Neutrino Factory by presenting in full detail the characteristics of the considered OPERA-like detector and the experimental treatment of the different backgrounds and signals. Furthermore, we perform a detailed study of the systematic errors associated both with the OPERA-like and the magnetized-iron detectors and their effects on the sensitivity. Finally, we also apply a refined statistical analysis of the simulated events based on the frequentist approach.