Measurement of the intrinsic electron neutrino component in the T2K neutrino beam with the ND280 detector

Abstract

The T2K experiment has reported the first observation of the appearance of electron neutrinos in a muon neutrino beam. The main and irreducible background to the appearance signal comes from the presence in the neutrino beam of a small intrinsic component of electron neutrinos originating from muon and kaon decays. In T2K, this component is expected to represent 1.2% of the total neutrino flux. A measurement of this component using the near detector (ND280), located 280 m from the target, is presented. The charged current interactions of electron neutrinos are selected by combining the particle identification capabilities of both the time projection chambers and electromagnetic calorimeters of ND280. The measured ratio between the observed electron neutrino beam component and the prediction is 1.01+-0.10 providing a direct confirmation of the neutrino fluxes and neutrino cross section modeling used for T2K neutrino oscillation analyses. Electron neutrinos coming from muons and kaons decay are also separately measured, resulting in a ratio with respect to the prediction of 0.68+-0.30 and 1.10+-0.14, respectively.

19 pages, 19 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Indication of Electron Neutrino Appearance from an Accelerator-produced Off-axis Muon Neutrino Beam
• First Measurement of the Muon Neutrino Charged Current Quasielastic Double Differential Cross Section
• The T2K Neutrino Flux Prediction
• A study of quasi-elastic muon neutrino and antineutrino scattering in the NOMAD experiment
• Measurement of Neutrino-Induced Charged-Current Charged Pion Production Cross Sections on Mineral Oil at E${}_{\nu }\sim 1\text{GeV}$
• Differences in Quasi-Elastic Cross-Sections of Muon and Electron Neutrinos
• Search for Charged Current Coherent Pion Production on Carbon in a Few-GeV Neutrino Beam
• NEUT Pion Final State Interactions

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Measurements of neutrino oscillation in appearance and disappearance channels by the T2K experiment with 6.6E20 protons on target
• Measurement of the Inclusive Electron Neutrino Charged Current Cross Section on Carbon with the T2K Near Detector
• Heavy neutral leptons below the kaon mass at hodoscopic detectors
• Characterization of resistive Micromegas detectors for the upgrade of the T2K Near Detector Time Projection Chambers
• Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K
• Search for short baseline ${\nu }_e$ disappearance with the T2K near detector
• Measurement of the Electron Neutrino Charged-current Interaction Rate on Water with the T2K ND280 pi-zero Detector
• Measurements of the ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\bar{\nu }}_{\mu }$-induced Coherent Charged Pion Production Cross Sections on ${}^{12}C$ by the T2K experiment
• The Majorana neutrino mass matrix indicated by the current data
• Investigating the differences between electron and muon neutrino interactions using the T2K near detector
• Measuring the electron anti-neutrino beam component in the T2K near detector ND280