arXiv · 1110.0679
Analysis of gamma-ray production in neutral-current neutrino-oxygen interactions at energies above 200 MeV
Abstract
It has long been recognized that observation of gamma rays originating from nuclear deexcitation can be exploited to identify neutral-current neutrino-nucleus interactions in water-Cherenkov detectors. We report the results of a calculation of the neutrino- and antineutrino-induced gamma-ray production cross section for oxygen target. Our analysis is focused on the kinematical region of neutrino energy larger than ~200 MeV, in which single-nucleon knockout is known to be the dominant reaction mechanism. The numerical results have been obtained using for the first time a realistic model of the target spectral function, extensively tested against electron-nucleus scattering data. We find that at neutrino energy 600 MeV the fraction of neutral-current interactions leading to emission of gamma-rays of energy larger than 6 MeV is ~41%, and that the contribution of the p_3/2 state is overwhelming.
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Artur M. Ankowski, Omar Benhar, Takaaki Mori, Ryuta Yamaguchi, Makoto Sakuda. 2012-02-01. Analysis of gamma-ray production in neutral-current neutrino-oxygen interactions at energies above 200 MeV. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.108.052505
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