Measurements of hadron yields from the T2K replica target in the NA61/SHINE experiment for neutrino flux prediction in T2K

T2K is an accelerator-based long-baseline neutrino experiment in Japan. The main goal of the T2K experiment is a search for CP violation in the lepton sector by measuring electron (anti)neutrino appearance in a muon (anti)neutrino beam. Initial (anti)neutrino flux is produced in decays of hadrons which originate from the interactions and the re-interactions of a $30\:$GeV proton beam with a $90\:$cm long graphite target. Knowledge of the T2K neutrino flux is limited due to large hadron production uncertainties. A series of hadron production measurements were done to solve this problem, in the NA61/SHINE experiment at CERN. Measurements were performed with a proton beam and two target types: a thin graphite target and a replica of the T2K target. Work presented in this thesis concentrates on the T2K replica target data taken in 2010 and the development of the analysis and calibration software. The aim of these measurements is to fully constrain production of $\pi^+$, $\pi^-$, $K^+$, $K^-$ and $p$ coming from the target surface by measuring differential hadron yields in the bins of outgoing particle momentum (p), polar angle ($\theta$) and longitudinal position on the target surface ($z$). This will allow reduction of the T2K neutrino flux uncertainties from around $10\%$ to below $5\%$. Predictions of Fluka2011.2c.5 Monte Carlo, NuBeam and QGSP_BERT physics lists from Geant4.10.03 have been compared to the data, and it has been found that Fluka2011.2c.5 gives the best prediction.