Measurements of Pion and Muon Nuclear Capture at Rest on Argon in the LArIAT Experiment

We report the measurement of the final-state products of negative pion and muon nuclear capture at rest on argon by the LArIAT experiment at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. We measure a population of isolated MeV-scale energy depositions, or blips, in 296 LArIAT events containing tracks from stoppi...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Hernandez-Morquecho, M. A, Acciarri, R, Asaadi, J, Backfish, M, Badgett, W, Basque, V, Blaszczyk, F. d. M, Foreman, W, Gomes, R, Gramellini, E, Ho, J, Kearns, E, Kemp, E, Kobilarcik, T, King, M, Littlejohn, B. R, Luo, X, Marchionni, A, Moura, C. A, Raaf, J. L, Schmitz, D. W, Soderberg, M, John, J. M. St, Szelc, A. M, Yang, T
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext bestellen
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:We report the measurement of the final-state products of negative pion and muon nuclear capture at rest on argon by the LArIAT experiment at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. We measure a population of isolated MeV-scale energy depositions, or blips, in 296 LArIAT events containing tracks from stopping low-momentum pions and muons. The average numbers of visible blips are measured to be 0.74 $\pm$ 0.19 and 1.86 $\pm$ 0.17 near muon and pion track endpoints, respectively. The 3.6$\sigma$ statistically significant difference in blip content between muons and pions provides the first demonstration of a new method of pion-muon discrimination in neutrino liquid argon time projection chamber experiments. LArIAT Monte Carlo simulations predict substantially higher average blip counts for negative muon (1.22 $\pm$ 0.08) and pion (2.34 $\pm$ 0.09) nuclear captures. We attribute this difference to Geant4's inaccurate simulation of the nuclear capture process.
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2408.05133