Letter of Intent: A new investigation of numu to nue oscillations with improved sensitivity in an enhanced MiniBooNE experiment

TL;DR

This paper proposes an enhanced MiniBooNE experiment with added scintillation to improve neutron detection and sensitivity to neutrino interactions, aiming to clarify the nature of observed excesses and explore additional physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detector modification with scintillation enhancement to improve neutrino interaction measurements and background discrimination.

Findings

Enhanced neutron detection capability.

Potential to distinguish signal from background.

New measurements of neutrino interactions.

Abstract

We propose adding 300 mg/l PPO to the existing MiniBooNE detector mineral oil to increase the scintillation response. This will allow the detection of associated neutrons and increase sensitivity to final-state nucleons in neutrino interactions. This increased capability will enable an independent test of whether the current excess seen in the MiniBooNE oscillation search is signal or background. In addition it will enable other neutrino interaction measurements to be made including a search for the strange-quark contribution to the nucleon spin Delta s and a low-energy measurement of charged-current quasielastic scattering.