Abstract
Inverse muon decay, $\nu_\mu e^-\to\mu^-\nu_e$, is a reaction whose cross-section can be predicted with very small uncertainties. It has a neutrino energy threshold of $\approx 11$ GeV and can be used to constrain the high-energy part of the flux in the NuMI neutrino beam. This reaction is the dominant source of events which only contain high-energy muons nearly parallel to the direction of the neutrino beam. We have isolated a sample of hundreds of such events in neutrino and anti-neutrino enhanced beams, and have constrained the predicted high-energy flux.
Highlights
Neutrino oscillation experiments [1,2,3,4] depend on measurements of neutrino interactions at a near detector as a companion measurement that probes the flux and neutrino interaction cross sections that affect the experiment
For the NuMI neutrino beam, whose neutrino-dominated (“forward horn current” or FHC) and antineutrino-dominated (“reverse horn current” or RHC) fluxes are shown in Fig. 1, the focusing peak is below the threshold, so inverse muon decay (IMD) is sensitive only to the energies greater than the focusing peak, the “high-energy tail”, of the beam
In MINOS, their momentum and electric charge are measured by a magnetized spectrometer composed of scintillator and iron. This analysis uses data that correspond to 10.61 × 1020 protons on target (POT) in the FHC configuration and 11.24 × 1020 POT in the RHC configuration taken between September 2013 and February 2019
Summary
Neutrino oscillation experiments [1,2,3,4] depend on measurements of neutrino interactions at a near detector as a companion measurement that probes the flux and neutrino interaction cross sections that affect the experiment. One partial solution to this problem is to measure scattering of neutrinos from atomic electrons Such scattering is accurately predicted in the Standard Model, with uncertainties of a percent or less primarily due to hadronic effects in radiative corrections [5]. For the NuMI neutrino beam, whose neutrino-dominated (“forward horn current” or FHC) and antineutrino-dominated (“reverse horn current” or RHC) fluxes are shown, the focusing peak is below the threshold, so IMD is sensitive only to the energies greater than the focusing peak, the “high-energy tail”, of the beam This tail has a large contribution from neutrinos which are unfocused or underfocused by the beam optics [10,11]. Background models described below will be improved with constraints from “sideband” samples at lower Eμ and higher θμ than the IMD signal
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