Sakai, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-2190-0062, Abe, K., Bronner, C. et al. (233 more authors) (2024) Measurement of the neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielastic cross section using atmospheric neutrinos in the SK-Gd experiment. Physical Review D, 109 (1). L011101. ISSN 2470-0010
Abstract
We report the first measurement of the atmospheric neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielastic (NCQE) cross section in the gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande (SK) water Cherenkov detector. In June 2020, SK began a new experimental phase, named SK-Gd, by loading 0.011% by mass of gadolinium into the ultrapure water of the SK detector. The introduction of gadolinium to ultrapure water has the effect of improving the neutron-tagging efficiency. Using a 552.2 day dataset from August 2020 to June 2022, we measure the NCQE cross section to be 0.74±0.22(stat)-0.15+0.85(syst)×10-38 cm2/oxygen in the energy range from 160 MeV to 10 GeV, which is consistent with the atmospheric neutrino-flux-averaged theoretical NCQE cross section and the measurement in the SK pure-water phase within the uncertainties. Furthermore, we compare the models of the nucleon-nucleus interactions in water and find that the binary cascade model and the Liège intranuclear cascade model provide a somewhat better fit to the observed data than the Bertini cascade model. Since the atmospheric neutrino-oxygen NCQE reactions are one of the main backgrounds in the search for diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB), these new results will contribute to future studies - and the potential discovery - of the DSNB in SK.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. |
Keywords: | Nuclear and Plasma Physics; Particle and High Energy Physics; Physical Sciences |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 27 Mar 2024 09:13 |
Last Modified: | 27 Mar 2024 09:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Physical Society (APS) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1103/physrevd.109.l011101 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:210931 |