학술논문
First Measurement of the $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ Interaction Cross Sections at the LHC with FASER's Emulsion Detector
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
FASER Collaboration; Abraham, Roshan Mammen; Anders, John; Antel, Claire; Ariga, Akitaka; Ariga, Tomoko; Atkinson, Jeremy; Bernlochner, Florian U.; Boeckh, Tobias; Boyd, Jamie; Brenner, Lydia; Burger, Angela; Cadoux, Franck; Cardella, Roberto; Casper, David W.; Cavanagh, Charlotte; Chen, Xin; Coccaro, Andrea; Debieux, Stephane; D'Onofrio, Monica; Desai, Ansh; Dmitrievsky, Sergey; Eley, Sinead; Favre, Yannick; Fellers, Deion; Feng, Jonathan L.; Fenoglio, Carlo Alberto; Ferrere, Didier; Fieg, Max; Filali, Wissal; Fujimori, Haruhi; Garabaglu, Ali; Gibson, Stephen; Gonzalez-Sevilla, Sergio; Gornushkin, Yuri; Gwilliam, Carl; Hayakawa, Daiki; Hsu, Shih-Chieh; Hu, Zhen; Iacobucci, Giuseppe; Inada, Tomohiro; Iodice, Luca; Jakobsen, Sune; Joos, Hans; Kajomovitz, Enrique; Kanai, Takumi; Kawahara, Hiroaki; Keyken, Alex; Kling, Felix; Kock, Daniela; Kontaxakis, Pantelis; Kose, Umut; Kotitsa, Rafaella; Kuehn, Susanne; Kugathasan, Thanushan; Lefebvre, Helena; Levinson, Lorne; Li, Ke; Liu, Jinfeng; Lutz, Margaret S.; MacDonald, Jack; Magliocca, Chiara; Martinelli, Fulvio; McCoy, Lawson; McFayden, Josh; Medina, Andrea Pizarro; Milanesio, Matteo; Moretti, Theo; Munker, Magdalena; Nakamura, Mitsuhiro; Nakano, Toshiyuki; Neuhaus, Friedemann; Nevay, Laurie; Nonaka, Motoya; Okui, Kazuaki; Ohashi, Ken; Otono, Hidetoshi; Pang, Hao; Paolozzi, Lorenzo; Petersen, Brian; Prim, Markus; Queitsch-Maitland, Michaela; Rokujo, Hiroki; Ruiz-Choliz, Elisa; Rubbia, André; Sabater-Iglesias, Jorge; Sato, Osamu; Scampoli, Paola; Schmieden, Kristof; Schott, Matthias; Sfyrla, Anna; Shamim, Mansoora; Shively, Savannah; Takubo, Yosuke; Tarannum, Noshin; Theiner, Ondrej; Torrence, Eric; Vasina, Svetlana; Vormwald, Benedikt; Wang, Di; Wang, Yuxiao; Welch, Eli; Zahorec, Samuel; Zambito, Stefano; Zhang, Shunliang
Source
Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 021802 (2024)
Subject
Language
Abstract
This paper presents the first results of the study of high-energy electron and muon neutrino charged-current interactions in the FASER$\nu$ emulsion/tungsten detector of the FASER experiment at the LHC. A subset of the FASER$\nu$ volume, which corresponds to a target mass of 128.6~kg, was exposed to neutrinos from the LHC $pp$ collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 13.6~TeV and an integrated luminosity of 9.5 fb$^{-1}$. Applying stringent selections requiring electrons with reconstructed energy above 200~GeV, four electron neutrino interaction candidate events are observed with an expected background of $0.025^{+0.015}_{-0.010}$, leading to a statistical significance of 5.2$\sigma$. This is the first direct observation of electron neutrino interactions at a particle collider. Eight muon neutrino interaction candidate events are also detected, with an expected background of $0.22^{+0.09}_{-0.07}$, leading to a statistical significance of 5.7$\sigma$. The signal events include neutrinos with energies in the TeV range, the highest-energy electron and muon neutrinos ever detected from an artificial source. The energy-independent part of the interaction cross section per nucleon is measured over an energy range of 560--1740 GeV (520--1760 GeV) for $\nu_e$ ($\nu_{\mu}$) to be $(1.2_{-0.7}^{+0.8}) \times 10^{-38}~\mathrm{cm}^{2}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ ($(0.5\pm0.2) \times 10^{-38}~\mathrm{cm}^{2}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$), consistent with Standard Model predictions. These are the first measurements of neutrino interaction cross sections in those energy ranges.