Measurement of the multineutron ν ¯ μ charged current differential cross section at low available energy on hydrocarbon

Olivier A.; Cai T.; Akhter S.; Ahmad Dar Z.; Ansari V.; Ascencio M.V.; Sajjad Athar M.; Bashyal A.; Bercellie A.; Betancourt M.; Bonilla J.L.; Bravar A.; Budd H.; Caceres G.; Díaz G.A.; Felix J.; Fields L.; Filkins A.; Fine R.; Gago A.M.; Gaur P.K.; Gilligan S.M.; Gran R.; Granados E.; Harris D.A.; Hart A.L.; Jena D.; Jena S.; Kleykamp J.; Klustová A.; Kordosky M.; Last D.; Lozano A.; Lu X.-G.; Manly S.; Mann W.A.; Mauger C.; McFarland K.S.; Messerly B.; Moreno O.; Morfín J.G.; Naples D.; Nelson J.K.; Nguyen C.; Paolone V.; Perdue G.N.; Pernas C.; Plows K.-J.; Ramírez M.A.; Ray H.; Roy N.; Ruterbories D.; Schellman H.; Solano Salinas C.J.; Sultana M.; Syrotenko V.S.; Valencia E.; Vaughan N.H.; Waldron A.V.; Yaeggy B.; Zazueta L. · Physical Review D (2023) · DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.108.112010

Resumen

Neutron production in antineutrino interactions can lead to bias in energy reconstruction in neutrino oscillation experiments, but these interactions have rarely been studied. MINERvA previously studied neutron production at an average antineutrino energy of ∼3 GeV in 2016 and found deficiencies in leading models. In this paper, the MINERvA 6 GeV average antineutrino energy dataset is shown to have similar disagreements. A measurement of the cross section for an antineutrino to produce two or more neutrons and have low visible energy is presented as an experiment-independent way to explore neutron production modeling. This cross section disagrees with several leading models' predictions. Neutron modeling techniques from nuclear physics are used to quantify neutron detection uncertainties on this result.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos; Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú