Neutral Current pi0 Production in the MiniBooNE Antineutrino Data

TL;DR

This paper analyzes neutral current pi0 production in MiniBooNE antineutrino data, which is a major background in neutrino oscillation experiments, focusing on production mechanisms and preliminary results.

Contribution

It presents the first analysis of NC pi0 production in MiniBooNE antineutrino data, including insights into delta resonance and coherent production processes.

Findings

Largest sample of antineutrino-induced pi0s at 1 GeV

Preliminary measurements of production rates

Insights into coherent and resonance production mechanisms

Abstract

The single largest background to future numubar to nuebar (numu to nue) oscillation searches is neutral current pi0 production. MiniBooNE, which began taking antineutrino data in January 2006, has the world's largest sample of pi0's produced by antineutrinos in the 1 GeV energy range. These neutral pions are primarily produced through the delta resonance but can also be created through "coherent production." The latter process is the coherent sum of glancing scatters of (anti)neutrinos off a neutron or proton, in which the nucleus is kept intact but a pi0 is created. Current analysis of NC pi0 production in the MiniBooNE antineutrino data will be discussed.