Simulations of Pion Production in the DAE\delta ALUS Target

Abstract

DAE\delta ALUS, the Decay At-rest Experiment for \delta_{CP} at a Laboratory for Underground Science will look for evidence of CP-violation in the neutrino sector, an ingredient in theories that seek to explain the matter/antimatter asymmetry in our universe. It will make a precision measurement of the oscillations of muon antineutrinos to electron antineutrinos using multiple neutrino sources created by low-cost compact cyclotrons. The experiment utilizes decay-at-rest neutrino beams produced by 800 MeV protons impinging a beam target of graphite and copper. Two well established Monte Carlo codes, MARS and GEANT4, have been used to optimise the design and the performance of the target. A study of the results obtained with these two codes is presented in this paper.