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Charged-current anti-neutrino interactions on hydrocarbon scintillator in the MINERvA detector are used to study activity from their final-state neutrons. To ensure that most of the neutrons are from the primary interaction, rather than hadronic reinteractions in the detector, the sample is limited to momentum transfers below 0.8 GeV/c. From 16,129 interactions, 15,246 neutral particle candidates are observed. The reference simulation predicts 64% of these candidates are due to neutrons from the anti-neutrino interaction directly, but also overpredicts the number of candidates by 15% overall, which is beyond the standard uncertainty estimates for models of neutrino interactions and neutron propagation in the detector. Using the measured distributions for energy deposition, time of flight, position, and speed, we explore the sensitivity to the details those two aspects of the models. We also use multiplicity distributions to evaluate the presence of a two-nucleon knockout process. These results provide critical new information toward a complete description of the hadronic final state of neutrino interactions, which is vital to neutrino oscillation experiments.
We consider the detector size, location, depth, background, and radio-purity required of a mid-Pacific deep-ocean instrument to accomplish the twin goals of making a definitive measurement of the electron anti-neutrino flux due to uranium and thorium decays from Earths mantle and core, and of testing the hypothesis for a natural nuclear reactor at the core of Earth. We take the experience with the KamLAND detector in Japan as our baseline for sensitivity and background estimates. We conclude that an instrument adequate to accomplish these tasks should have an exposure of at least 10 kilotonne-years (kT-y), should be placed at least at 4 km depth, may be located close to the Hawaiian Islands (no significant background from them), and should aim for KamLAND radio-purity levels, except for radon where it should be improved by a factor of at least 100. With an exposure of 10 kT-y we should achieve a 24% measurement of the U/Th content of the mantle plus core. Exposure at multiple ocean locations for testing lateral heterogeneity is possible.
The first measurements of antineutrino charged-current quasielastic ($ umub$ CCQE, $ umu + N to mup + N$) and neutral-current elastic ($ umub$ NCE, $ umu + N to umu + N$) cross sections with $< E_{bar{ u}} >$ $<$ 1 GeV are presented. To maximize the precision of these measurements, many data-driven background measurements were executed, including a first demonstration of charge separation using a non-magnetized detector. Apart from extending our knowledge of antineutrino interactions by probing a new energy range, these measurements constrain signal and background processes for current and future neutrino oscillation experiments and also carry implications for intra-nuclear interactions.
A search for muon anti-neutrino to electron anti-neutrino oscillations was conducted by the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center using muon anti-neutrinos from positive muon decay at rest. A total excess of 87.9 +/- 22.4 +/- 6.0 events consistent with electron anti-neutrino plus proton scattering to positron plus neutron was observed above the expected background. This excess corresponds to an oscillation probability of (0.264 +/- 0.067 +/- 0.045), which is consistent with an earlier analysis. In conjunction with other known limits on neutrino oscillations, the LSND data suggest that neutrino oscillations occur in the 0.2-10 eV^2/c^4 Delta-m^2 range, indicating a neutrino mass greater than 0.4 eV/c^2.
Rescattering following a neutrino-nucleus reaction changes the number, energy, and direction of detectable hadrons. In turn, this affects the selection and kinematic distributions of subsamples of neutrino events used for interaction or oscillation analysis. This technical note focuses on three forms of two-body rescattering. Elastic hadron+nucleus scattering primarily changes the direction of the hadron with very little energy transfer. Secondly, a hadron+nucleon quasi-elastic process leads to the knockout of a single struck nucleon, possibly with charge exchange between the two hadrons. Also, a pion can be absorbed leading to the ejection of two nucleons. There was an error in the code of the {small GENIE} neutrino event generator that affects these processes. We present examples of the change with the fixed version of the scattering process, but also compare these specifically to turning off elastic scattering completely, which is similar to other neutrino event generator configurations or a potential Equick-fix to already generated samples. Three examples are taken from current topics of interest: transverse kinematics observables in quasielastic neutrino reactions, the pion angle with respect to the incoming and outgoing lepton for $Delta$ reactions with a charged pion in the final state, and the angle between two protons in reactions with no pions present. Elastic hadron+nucleus scattering in its unfixed form makes a large distortion in distributions of transverse kinematic imbalances scattering, but only mild distortion in other observables. The distortion of the other two processes is also mild for all distributions considered. The correct form of hadron+nucleus scattering process could play a role in describing the width and center of the sharp peak in the inferred Fermi-motion of the struck nucleon or be benchmarked using (e,ep) data.
We report on multinucleon effects in low momentum transfer ($< 0.8$ GeV/c) anti-neutrino interactions on plastic (CH) scintillator. These data are from the 2010-2011 antineutrino phase of the MINERvA experiment at Fermilab. The hadronic energy spectrum of this inclusive sample is well described when a screening effect at low energy transfer and a two-nucleon knockout process are added to a relativistic Fermi gas model of quasielastic, $Delta$ resonance, and higher resonance processes. In this analysis, model elements introduced to describe previously published neutrino results have quantitatively similar benefits for this antineutrino sample. We present the results as a double-differential cross section to accelerate investigation of alternate models for antineutrino scattering off nuclei.