Abstract
Modern neutrino detectors, particularly the large liquid argon time projection chambers (LAr TPCs) at SBN and DUNE, provide an unprecedented amount of information about GeV-scale interactions. By taking advantage of the excellent spatial and calorimetric resolution as well as the low tracking thresholds provided by LAr TPCs, we present a novel method of estimating the neutrino energy in neutral current interactions. This method has potential implications for the search for a sterile neutrino; it allows for the potential observation of spectral distortions due to sterile neutrino-induced oscillations in the neutral current neutrino energy spectrum. As an example, we use this method to perform an analysis of the statistics-only sensitivity to sterile neutrinos in the neutral current channel at SBN under a 3+1 model.
Highlights
And precisely reconstructing the incident neutrino energy in neutrino interactions is notoriously difficult
Measuring the total energy deposited in a detector following a neutral current (NC) interaction can only set a lower bound on the neutrino energy as it does not account for the energy carried away by the outgoing neutrino
The conventional method of relying on calorimetry alone, measuring the total visible energy, provides a lower bound on the neutrino energy, but the accuracy and precision is poor relative to methods used in charged current interactions
Summary
And precisely reconstructing the incident neutrino energy in neutrino interactions is notoriously difficult. In the hundreds-of-MeV neutrino energy regime where quasielastic (QE) scattering is the dominant interaction mode, the kinematics of the outgoing lepton are sufficient for determining the neutrino energy This gets more challenging at higher energies where resonant production and deep inelastic scattering dominate and final state interactions (FSI) are more prevalent. The typical method employed in estimating the incident neutrino energy in NC interactions is to rely on calorimetry alone, summing all visible energy in the detector to provide a lower bound. This method yields a poor energy resolution relative to CC interactions while . With the level of detail about the hadronic final state provided by LAr TPCs, it might be possible to improve neutrino energy estimation in NC interactions. We present a statistics-only toy analysis of NC disappearance sensitivities, illustrating that the addition of our reconstruction method has the potential to improve sensitivity
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