A Search for Single Photon Events in Neutrino Interactions

Abstract

We present a search for neutrino-induced events containing a single, exclusive photon using data from the NOMAD experiment at the CERN SPS where the average energy of the neutrino flux is $\simeq 25$ GeV. The search is motivated by an excess of electron-like events in the 200--475 MeV energy region as reported by the MiniBOONE experiment. In NOMAD, photons are identified via their conversion to $e^+e^-$ in an active target embedded in a magnetic field. The background to the single photon signal is dominated by the asymmetric decay of neutral pions produced either in a coherent neutrino-nucleus interaction, or in a neutrino-nucleon neutral current deep inelastic scattering, or in an interaction occurring outside the fiducial volume. All three backgrounds are determined {\it in situ} using control data samples prior to opening the `signal-box'. In the signal region, we observe {\bf 155} events with a predicted background of {\bf 129.2 $\pm$ 8.5 $\pm$ 3.3}. We interpret this as null evidence for excess of single photon events, and set a limit. Assuming that the hypothetical single photon has a momentum distribution similar to that of a photon from the coherent $\pi^0$ decay, the measurement yields an upper limit on single photon events, {\boldmath $< 4.0 \times 10^{-4}$} per \nm\ charged current event. Narrowing the search to events where the photon is approximately collinear with the incident neutrino, we observe {\bf 78} events with a predicted background of {\bf 76.6 $\pm$ 4.9 $\pm$ 1.9} yielding a more stringent upper limit, {\boldmath $< 1.6 \times 10^{-4}$} per \nm\ charged current event.