Search for Charged Current Coherent Pion Production on Carbon in a Few-GeV Neutrino Beam

TL;DR

This study searched for charged current coherent pion production on carbon using a few-GeV neutrino beam but found no evidence, setting upper limits on the cross section ratio at different energies.

Contribution

First experimental search for charged current coherent pion production on carbon at these energies, providing upper limits where no previous measurements existed.

Findings

No evidence for coherent pion production was observed.

Set 90% confidence level upper limits on the cross section ratio.

Limits are 0.0067 at 1.1 GeV and 0.0136 at 2.2 GeV.

Abstract

The SciBooNE Collaboration has performed a search for charged current coherent pion production from muon neutrinos scattering on carbon, \nu_\mu ^{12}C \to \mu^- ^{12}C \pi^+, with two distinct data samples. No evidence for coherent pion production is observed. We set 90% confidence level upper limits on the cross section ratio of charged current coherent pion production to the total charged current cross section at 0.67\times 10^{-2} at mean neutrino energy 1.1 GeV and 1.36\times 10^{-2} at mean neutrino energy 2.2 GeV.