Abstract
Neutrino trident scattering is a rare Standard Model process where a charged-lepton pair is produced in neutrino-nucleus scattering. To date, only the dimuon final-state has been observed, with around 100 total events, while the other channels are as yet unexplored. In this work, we compute the trident production cross section by performing a complete four-body phase space calculation for different hadronic targets. This provides a correct estimate both of the coherent and the diffractive contributions to these cross sections, but also allows us to address certain inconsistencies in the literature related to the use of the Equivalent Photon Approximation in this context. We show that this approximation can give a reasonable estimate only for the production of dimuon final-states in coherent scattering, being inadmissible for all other cases considered. We provide estimates of the number and distribution of trident events at several current and future near detector facilities subjected to intense neutrino beams from accelerators: five liquid-argon detectors (SBND, μBooNE, ICARUS, DUNE and νSTORM), the iron detector of T2K (INGRID) and three detectors made of composite material (MINOS, NOνA and MINERνA). We find that for many experiments, trident measurements are an attainable goal and a valuable addition to their near detector physics programme.
Highlights
The Standard Model (SM) has been confronted with a variety of experimental data and has so far emerged as an impressive phenomenological description of nature, except in the neutrino sector
We provide estimates of the number and distribution of trident events at several current and future near detector facilities subjected to intense neutrino beams from accelerators: five liquid-argon detectors (SBND, μBooNE, ICARUS, Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) and νSTORM), the iron detector of T2K (INGRID) and three detectors made of composite material (MINOS, Numi Off-axis νe Appearance (NOνA) and Main INjector ExpeRiment ν-A (MINERνA))
To illustrate our point and to quantify the errors induced by the Equivalent Photon Approximation (EPA), we show on the left panel of figure 5 the ratio R of the trident cross section calculated using the EPA with an artificial cut at Q2cut, as performed in [6], to the full calculation used in this work as a function of the incoming neutrino energy: R = σEPA(Eν )|Qcut . σ4PS(Eν )
Summary
The Standard Model (SM) has been confronted with a variety of experimental data and has so far emerged as an impressive phenomenological description of nature, except in the neutrino sector. The precise determination of the neutrino mixing parameters as well as the search for the neutrino mass ordering and leptonic CP violation drive both present and future accelerator neutrino experiments To accomplish these tasks, these experiments rely on state-of-the-art near detectors, made of heavy materials, located a few hundred meters downstream of the neutrino source and subjected to a high intensity beam. For larger momentum transfers diffractive and deep-inelastic scattering become increasingly relevant [6] This process exists for all combinations of same-flavour or mixed flavour chargedlepton final-states, to this day only the νμ-induced dimuon mode, νμ+H.
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