Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2017

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevD.96.113008

Publication Title

Physical Review D

Volume

96

Issue

113008

Pages

1-14

Abstract

Semi-inclusive charge-changing neutrino reactions on targets of heavy water are investigated with the goal of determining the relative contributions to the total cross section of deuterium and oxygen in kinematics chosen to emphasize the former. The study is undertaken for conditions where the typical neutrino beam energies are in the few GeV region, and hence relativistic modeling is essential. For this, the previous relativistic approach for the deuteron is employed, together with a spectral function approach for the case of oxygen. Upon optimizing the kinematics of the final-state particles assumed to be detected (typically a muon and a proton) it is shown that the oxygen contribution to the total cross section is suppressed by roughly an order of magnitude compared with the deuterium cross section, thereby confirming that CCN studies of heavy water can effectively yield the cross sections for deuterium, with acceptable backgrounds from oxygen. This opens the possibility of using deuterium to determine the incident neutrino flux distribution, to have it serve as a target for which the nuclear structure issues are minimal, and possibly to use deuterium to provide improved knowledge of specific aspects of hadronic structure, such as to explore the momentum transfer dependence of the isovector axial-vector form factor of the nucleon.

Comments

"The author(s)... shall have the following rights (the 'Author Rights'): ...

3. The right to use all or part of the Article, including the APS-prepared version without revision or modification, on the author(s)’ web home page or employer’s website and to make copies of all or part of the Article, including the APS-prepared version without revision or modification, for the author(s)’ and/or the employer’s use for educational or research purposes."

Original Publication Citation

Van Orden, J. W., Donnelly, T. W., & Moreno, O. (2017). Coincidence charged-current neutrino-induced deuteron disintegration for 2H216O. Physical Review D, 96(113008), 1-14. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.96.113008

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