Title
Evidence for Neutral-Current Diffractive π0 Production from Hydrogen in Neutrino Interactions on Hydrocarbon
Date Issued
2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Wolcott J.
Altinok O.
Bercellie A.
Betancourt M.
Bodek A.
Bravar A.
Budd H.
Cai T.
Carneiro M.F.
Chvojka J.
Da Motta H.
Devan J.
Dytman S.A.
Díaz G.A.
Eberly B.
Endress E.
Felix J.
Fields L.
Fine R.
Galindo R.
Gallagher H.
Golan T.
Gran R.
Harris D.A.
Higuera A.
Kiveni M.
Kleykamp J.
Kordosky M.
Le T.
Publisher(s)
American Physical Society
Abstract
The MINERvA experiment observes an excess of events containing electromagnetic showers relative to the expectation from Monte Carlo simulations in neutral-current neutrino interactions with mean beam energy of 4.5 GeV on a hydrocarbon target. The excess is characterized and found to be consistent with neutral-current π0 production with a broad energy distribution peaking at 7 GeV and a total cross section of 0.26±0.02(stat.)±0.08(sys.)×10-39 cm2. The angular distribution, electromagnetic shower energy, and spatial distribution of the energy depositions of the excess are consistent with expectations from neutrino neutral-current diffractive π0 production from hydrogen in the hydrocarbon target. These data comprise the first direct experimental observation and constraint for a reaction that poses an important background process in neutrino-oscillation experiments searching for νμ to νe oscillations. © 2016 American Physical Society.
Volume
117
Issue
11
Number
17
Language
English
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84988843891
Source
Physical Review Letters
ISSN of the container
0031-9007
Source funding
Sponsor(s)
This work was supported by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory under U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Award No. DE-AC02-07CH11359, which included the MINERvA construction project. Construction support was also granted by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. PHY-0619727 and by the University of Rochester. Support for participating scientists was provided by the NSF and DOE (USA), CAPES and CNPq (Brazil), CoNaCyT (Mexico), CONICYT (Chile), CONCYTEC, DGI-PUCP, and IDI/IGI-UNI (Peru), and Latin American Center for Physics (CLAF). We thank the MINOS Collaboration for use of its near detector data. We acknowledge the dedicated work of the Fermilab staff responsible for the operation and maintenance of the NuMI beam line, MINERvA, and MINOS detectors and the physical and software environments that support scientific computing at Fermilab.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica