Title

Evidence of Coherent K+ Meson Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

Authors

Z. Wang, Univ Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 USA;
C. M. Marshall, Univ Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 USA;
A. Bercellie, Univ Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 USA;Follow
L. Aliaga, Coll William & Mary, Dept Phys, Williamsburg, VA 23187 USAFollow
M. Kordosky, Coll William & Mary, Dept Phys, Williamsburg, VA 23187 USA
J. K. Nelson, Coll William & Mary, Dept Phys, Williamsburg, VA 23187 USA
A. Norrick, Coll William & Mary, Dept Phys, Williamsburg, VA 23187 USA
D. Zhang, Coll William & Mary, Dept Phys, Williamsburg, VA 23187 USA

Document Type

Article

Department/Program

Physics

Journal Title

Physical Review Letters

Pub Date

2016

Volume

6117

Issue

6

Abstract

Neutrino-induced charged-current coherent kaon production nu(mu)A -> mu(-)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+, 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 3 sigma significance.

Recommended Citation

Wang, Z., Marshall, C. M., Aliaga, L., Altinok, O., Bellantoni, L., Bercellie, A., ... & Cai, T. (2016). Evidence of Coherent K+ Meson Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering. Physical review letters, 117(6), 061802.

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.061802