Impact of High Energy \(\nu _e (\bar{\nu }_e)\) Events on NOvA Oscillation Sensitivities

NOvA is a two detector, long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment located at Fermilab, Batavia, IL, USA. It is primarily designed to constraint neutrino oscillation parameters using muon neutrino (anti-neutrino) disappearance data and electron neutrino (anti-neutrino) appearance data. NOvA detects neutrinos from Fermilab’s Neutrinos at Main Injector (NuMI) beamline. The unoscillated muon neutrino and beam \(\nu _e\) events are observed by the NOvA Near Detector (ND), which is 100 m underground and at a distance of 1 km from the beam source. The Far Detector (FD), situated 809 km away from the ND, is in Ash River, MN, USA, and observes \(\nu _{\mu }\) and \(\nu _{e}\) events after oscillations. Traditionally, NOvA has used \(\nu _{e}\) events in the energy range \(1< E_{\nu } < 5\) GeV for 3-flavor neutrino oscillation analyses to constraint the neutrino oscillation parameters. In this study we looked at the impact of including high-energy neutrino events with energies up to 12 GeV in the analysis with the aim of constraining the beam electron neutrino/antineutrino background events. Event count predictions after adding this high-energy sample events and latest three flavor oscillation results of the NOvA experiment are presented.