NuIntBibby César Jesús Valls
Neutrino interaction measurements, in one place.

MINERvA · 2016

First evidence of coherent K+K^{+} meson production in neutrino-nucleus scattering

Phys.Rev.Lett. 117 61802 · 10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.061802

arXiv:1606.08890JournalINSPIREAll papers

Measurements

CurrentFlavorTargetTopologyTypeObservablesEnergy
CCνμCHCCcoh1K+—first evidence of coherent K+ production3σ observation

Abstract

Neutrino-induced charged-current coherent kaon production, νμA→μ−K+A\nu_{\mu}A\rightarrow\mu^{-}K^{+}A, is a rare, inelastic electroweak process that brings a K+K^+ on shell and leaves the target nucleus intact in its ground state. This process is significantly lower in rate than 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+K^+, μ−\mu^- 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 3σ3\sigma significance.

Citation

@article{MINERvA:2016cun,
    author = "Wang, Z. and others",
    collaboration = "MINERvA",
    title = "{First evidence of coherent $K^{+}$ meson production in neutrino-nucleus scattering}",
    eprint = "1606.08890",
    archivePrefix = "arXiv",
    primaryClass = "hep-ex",
    reportNumber = "FERMILAB-PUB-16-282-ND",
    doi = "10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.061802",
    journal = "Phys. Rev. Lett.",
    volume = "117",
    number = "6",
    pages = "061802",
    year = "2016"
}