Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-particle-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/7/c/iii/solution

Use a high-multiplicity hadronic mode with only one invisible neutrino, and reconstruct the total visible four-momentum . In the tau lepton rest frame,
Fit the endpoint of the hadronic invariant mass distribution, preferably together with its laboratory energy boundary at known beam energy. The two-dimensional boundary uses more information than the single largest observed mass. Detector smearing, unseen neutral products, backgrounds, beam radiation and hadronic spectral modeling must be included. Absence of a displaced endpoint generally sets an upper bound rather than a positive neutrino mass measurement. Strictly the flavour state contains several mass eigenstates; an unresolved endpoint constrains the corresponding weighted mass spectrum.

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