Evidence for neutral-current diffractive neutral pion production from hydrogen in neutrino interactions on hydrocarbon
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 neutral pion production with a broad energy distribution peaking at 7 GeV and a total cross section of 0.26 +- 0.02 (stat) +- 0.08 (sys) x 10^{-39} cm^{2}. 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 neutral pion 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 muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1604.01728,
title = {Evidence for neutral-current diffractive neutral pion production from hydrogen in neutrino interactions on hydrocarbon},
author = {MINERvA Collaboration and J. Wolcott and L. Aliaga and O. Altinok and A. Bercellie and M. Betancourt and A. Bodek and A. Bravar and H. Budd and T. Cai and M. F. Carneiro and J. Chvojka and H. da Motta and J. Devan and S. A. Dytman and G. A. Díaz and B. Eberly and E. Endress and J. Felix and L. Fields and R. Fine and R. Galindo and H. Gallagher and T. Golan and R. Gran and D. A. Harris and A. Higuera and K. Hurtado and M. Kiveni and J. Kleykamp and M. Kordosky and T. Le and E. Maher and S. Manly and W. A. Mann and C. M. Marshall and D. A. Martinez Caicedo and K. S. McFarland and C. L. McGivern and A. M. McGowan and B. Messerly and J. Miller and A. Mislivec and J. G. Morfín and J. Mousseau and D. Naples and J. K. Nelson and A. Norrick and Nuruzzaman and J. Osta and V. Paolone and J. Park and C. E. Patrick and G. N. Perdue and L. Rakotondravohitra and M. A. Ramirez and H. Ray and L. Ren and D. Rimal and P. A. Rodrigues and D. Ruterbories and H. Schellman and D. W. Schmitz and C. J. Solano Salinas and S. Sánchez Falero and N. Tagg and B. G. Tice and E. Valencia and T. Walton and M. Wospakrik and D. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1604.01728},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
15 pages, 7 figures; accepted by Phys. Rev. Lett