  Standard three-flavor neutrino oscillations have well explained by a wide
range of neutrino experiments. However, the anomalous results, such as
electron-antineutrino excess seen by LSND and MiniBooNE do not fit the
three-flavor paradigm. This can be explained by an additional fourth flavor
sterile neutrino at a larger scale than the existing three flavor neutrinos.
The NOvA experiment consists of two finely segmented, liquid scintillator
detectors operating 14 .6 mrad off-axis from the NuMI muon-neutrino beam. The
Near Detector is located on the Fermilab campus, 1 km from the NuMI target,
while the Far Detector is located at Ash River, MN, 810 km from the NuMI
target. The NOvA experiment is primarily designed to measure electron-neutrino
appearance at the Far Detector using the Near Detector to control systematic
uncertainties; however, the Near Detector is well suited for searching for
anomalous short-baseline oscillations. This poster will present a novel method
for selecting tau neutrino interactions with high purity at the Near Detector
using a convolutional neural network. Using this method, the sensitivity to
anomalous short-baseline tau-neutrino appearance due to sterile neutrino
oscillations will be presented.
