Title
Evidence of Coherent K+ Meson Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
Date Issued
05 August 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Wang Z.
Marshall C.M.
Altinok O.
Bellantoni L.
Bercellie A.
Betancourt M.
Bodek A.
Bravar A.
Budd H.
Cai T.
Carneiro M.F.
Da Motta H.
Dytman S.A.
Díaz G.A.
Eberly B.
Endress E.
Felix J.
Fields L.
Fine R.
Galindo R.
Gallagher H.
Ghosh A.
Golan T.
Gran R.
Harris D.A.
Higuera A.
Kiveni M.
Kleykamp J.
Kordosky M.
Le T.
Maher E.
Manly S.
Mann W.A.
Martinez Caicedo D.A.
McFarland K.S.
McGivern C.L.
McGowan A.M.
Messerly B.
Miller J.
Mislivec A.
Morfín J.G.
Mousseau J.
Naples D.
Nelson J.K.
Norrick A.
Nuruzzaman
Paolone V.
Park J.
Patrick C.E.
Perdue G.N.
Rakotondravohitra L.
Ramirez M.A.
Ransome R.D.
Ray H.
Ren L.
Rimal D.
Rodrigues P.A.
Ruterbories D.
Schellman H.
Schmitz D.W.
Simon C.
Tice B.G.
Valencia E.
Walton T.
Wolcott J.
Wospakrik M.
Zavala G.
Zhang D.
Publisher(s)
American Physical Society
Abstract
Neutrino-induced charged-current coherent kaon production νμA→μ-K+A is a rare, inelastic electroweak process that brings a K+ on shell and leaves the target nucleus intact in its ground state. This process is significantly lower in rate than the neutrino-induced charged-current coherent pion production because of Cabibbo suppression and a kinematic suppression due to the larger kaon mass. We search for such events in the scintillator tracker of MINERvA by observing the final state K+, μ-, and no other detector activity, and by using the kinematics of the final state particles to reconstruct the small momentum transfer to the nucleus, which is a model-independent characteristic of coherent scattering. We find the first experimental evidence for the process at 3σ significance.
Volume
117
Issue
6
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Física de partículas, Campos de la Física
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84982182262
Source
Physical Review Letters
ISSN of the container
00319007
Sponsor(s)
National Science Foundation, NSF
Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, MPS - 0619727 MPS
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus