Measurement of the neutrino-oxygen neutral-current interaction cross section by observing nuclear deexcitation γ rays



Abe, K, Adam, J, Aihara, H, Akiri, T, Andreopoulos, C ORCID: 0000-0003-2020-8215, Aoki, S, Ariga, A, Ariga, T, Assylbekov, S, Autiero, D
et al (show 350 more authors) (2014) Measurement of the neutrino-oxygen neutral-current interaction cross section by observing nuclear deexcitation γ rays PHYSICAL REVIEW D, 90 (7). 072012-. ISSN 1550-7998, 1550-2368

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Abstract

We report the first measurement of the neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielastic (NCQE) cross section. It is obtained by observing nuclear deexcitation γ rays which follow neutrino-oxygen interactions at the Super-Kamiokande water Cherenkov detector. We use T2K data corresponding to 3.01×1020 protons on target. By selecting only events during the T2K beam window and with well-reconstructed vertices in the fiducial volume, the large background rate from natural radioactivity is dramatically reduced. We observe 43 events in the 4-30 MeV reconstructed energy window, compared with an expectation of 51.0, which includes an estimated 16.2 background events. The background is primarily nonquasielastic neutral-current interactions and has only 1.2 events from natural radioactivity. The flux-averaged NCQE cross section we measure is 1.55×10-38cm2 with a 68% confidence interval of (1.22,2.20)×10-38cm2 at a median neutrino energy of 630 MeV, compared with the theoretical prediction of 2.01×10-38cm2.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: 10 pages, 6 figures
Uncontrolled Keywords: hep-ex, hep-ex
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 05 Apr 2016 13:58
Last Modified: 16 Jun 2026 08:19
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.90.072012
Related Websites:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3000012
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