Measurement of neutrino-induced neutral-current coherent <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msup><mml:mi>π</mml:mi><mml:mn>0</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:math> production in the NOvA near detector

Abstract

The cross section of neutrino-induced neutral-current coherent ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ production on a carbon-dominated target is measured in the NOvA near detector. This measurement uses a narrow-band neutrino beam with an average neutrino energy of 2.7 GeV, which is of interest to ongoing and future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The measured, flux-averaged cross section is $\ensuremath{\sigma}=13.8\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.9(\mathrm{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}2.3(\mathrm{syst})\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}40}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}/\text{nucleus}$, consistent with model prediction. This result is the most precise measurement of neutral-current coherent ${\ensuremath{\pi}}^{0}$ production in the few-GeV neutrino energy region.