Measurement of Neutrino-Induced Neutral-Current Coherent $pi^0$ Production in the NOvA Near Detector


Abstract in English

The cross section of neutrino-induced neutral-current coherent $pi^0$ production on a carbon-dominated target is measured in the NOvA near detector. This measurement uses a narrow-band neutrino beam with an average neutrino energy of 2.7,GeV, which is of interest to ongoing and future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The measured, flux-averaged cross section is $sigma = 13.8pm0.9 (text{stat})pm2.3 (text{syst}) times 10^{-40},text{cm}^2/text{nucleus}$, consistent with model prediction. This result is the most precise measurement of neutral-current coherent $pi^0$ production in the few-GeV neutrino energy region.

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