Measurement of neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasi-elastic cross section using atmospheric neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande

Abstract

Neutral current (NC) interactions of atmospheric neutrinos on oxygen form one of the major backgrounds in the search for supernova relic neutrinos with water-based Cherenkov detectors. The NC channel is dominated by neutrino quasi-elastic (NCQE) scattering off nucleons inside ${}^{16}$O nuclei. In this paper we report the first measurement of NCQE cross section using atmospheric neutrinos at Super-Kamiokande (SK). The measurement used 2,778 live days of SK-IV data with a fiducial volume of 22.5 kiloton water. Within the visible energy window of 7.5-29.5 MeV, we observed $117$ events compared to the expected $71.9$ NCQE signal and $53.1$ background events. Weighted by the atmospheric neutrino spectrum from 160 MeV to 10 GeV, the flux averaged NCQE cross section is measured to be $(1.01\pm 0.17(\text{stat.}{)}_{-0.30}^{+0.78}(\text{sys.}))\times 10^{-38}$ cm${}^2$.

arXiv comment11 pages, 9 figures, submitted to PRD

References in corpus (28)

• The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator
• Calculation of atmospheric neutrino flux using the interaction model calibrated with atmospheric muon data
• GADZOOKS! Antineutrino Spectroscopy with Large Water Cerenkov Detectors
• Solar Neutrino Measurements in Super-Kamiokande-IV
• A new parameterization of the nucleon elastic form factors
• The Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background is detectable in Super-Kamiokande
• Electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering in the impulse approximation regime
• Supernova Relic Neutrino Search at Super-Kamiokande
• Improvement of low energy atmospheric neutrino flux calculation using the JAM nuclear interaction model
• Relic neutrino background from cosmological supernovae
• Measurement of Neutrino-Induced Charged-Current Charged Pion Production Cross Sections on Mineral Oil at E${}_{\nu }\sim 1\text{GeV}$
• Supernova Relic Neutrino Search with Neutron Tagging at Super-Kamiokande-IV
• Signal for supernova ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\nu }_{\tau }$ neutrinos in water Čerenkov detectors
• Measurements of the atmospheric neutrino flux by Super-Kamiokande: energy spectra, geomagnetic effects, and solar modulation
• Measurement of the Inclusive NuMu Charged Current Cross Section on Carbon in the Near Detector of the T2K Experiment
• First Study of Neutron Tagging with a Water Cherenkov Detector
• Mass signature of supernova ${\nu }_{\mu }$ and ${\nu }_{\tau }$ neutrinos in SuperKamiokande
• First calculation of cosmic-ray muon spallation backgrounds for MeV astrophysical neutrino signals in Super-Kamiokande
• Cross sections for neutrino and antineutrino induced pion production on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region using MINERvA
• First measurement of radioactive isotope production through cosmic-ray muon spallation in Super-Kamiokande IV
• Signatures of Dark Radiation in Neutrino and Dark Matter Detectors
• Analysis of gamma-ray production in neutral-current neutrino-oxygen interactions at energies above 200 MeV
• First Measurement of the Muon Neutrino Charged Current Single Pion Production Cross Section on Water with the T2K Near Detector
• Tagging Spallation Backgrounds with Showers in Water-Cherenkov Detectors
• Search for Neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande associated with the GW170817 neutron-star merger
• Search for Neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande associated with Gravitational Wave Events GW150914 and GW151226
• Measurement of the neutrino-oxygen neutral-current interaction cross section by observing nuclear deexcitation $\gamma$ rays
• Search for an excess of events in the Super-Kamiokande detector in the directions of the astrophysical neutrinos reported by the IceCube Collaboration

Cited by in corpus (13)

• Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background Search at Super-Kamiokande
• Direct Detection Signals from Absorption of Fermionic Dark Matter
• Inclusive Nucleon Decay Searches as a Frontier of Baryon Number Violation
• Measurement of neutrino and antineutrino neutral-current quasielastic-like interactions on oxygen by detecting nuclear de-excitation $\gamma$-rays
• Detecting the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background in the future Water-based Liquid Scintillator Detector Theia
• Evidence of Antineutrinos from Distant Reactors using Pure Water at SNO+
• Neutral-current background induced by atmospheric neutrinos at large liquid-scintillator detectors: II. Methodology for in situ measurements
• Diffuse Neutrino Flux Based on the Rates of Core-collapse Supernovae and Black Hole Formation Deduced from a Novel Galactic Chemical Evolution Model
• First Detailed Calculation of Atmospheric Neutrino Foregrounds to the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background in Super-Kamiokande
• Implementation and investigation of electron-nucleus scattering in the \textsc{NEUT} neutrino event generator
• Measurement of $\gamma$-rays generated by neutron interaction with ${}^{16}$O at 30 MeV and 250 MeV
• Exploring Four Fermion Contact Couplings of a Dark Fermion and an Electron at Hadron Colliders and Direct Detection Experiments
• CNNs for enhanced background discrimination in DSNB searches in large-scale water-Gd detectors