Abstract
The OPERA experiment, designed to search for neutrino oscillations, started its physics run in July 2008. It is the most recent emulsion-counter hybrid experiment. In this experiment two different types of emulsion detectors are used. One is called Emulsion Cloud Chamber (ECC), and is used as a target. The other is called Changeable Sheet (CS), which is attached to the downstream side of each ECC to identify the ECC in which a tagged neutrino interaction occurred. The CS interfaces rough tracking information obtained in the electronic detectors to the ECC and therefore is a key element of the emulsion-counter hybrid experiment. As a first step, a CS selected by electronic detectors is scanned and analyzed to decide if the ECC is to be developed and analyzed in detail; a few CS are usually to be analyzed to identify an ECC for each tagged event due to the inaccuracy of the electronic detectors. The CS has a large scanning area and therefore Japan and Europe (Gran Sasso) are sharing in the CS analysis load to handle the scanning job. In this paper, the CS analysis method developed for the Japan scanning facility is described in detail. 100 million tracks are read out on each CS by an automatic emulsion read-out system ( S-UTS ), most of them are so-called fake tracks mainly due to low momentum Compton electrons or random noise and a few real tracks from a tagged neutrino interaction have to be picked up among a huge background. A dedicated method to reject this background without losing real tracks has been developed on the basis of analyzing track data obtained by S-UTS and combining these data with a final selection using additional information on multiple Coulomb scattering of candidate tracks obtained by human eye check to eliminate a remaining background. Performance of this method is shown to be sufficient for the OPERA experiment.