First Search for Neutral Current Coherent Single-Photon Production in MicroBooNE

/ Authors

P. Abratenko, D. A. Aldana, L. Arellano, J. Asaadi, A. Ashkenazi, S. Balasubramanian, B. Baller, A. Barnard, G. Barr, D. Barrow

and 169 more authors

J. Barrow, V. Basque, J. Bateman, O. Rodrigues, S. Berkman, A. Bhat, M. Bhattacharya, M. Bishai, A. Blake, B. Bogart, T. Bolton, M. Brunetti, L. Camilleri, D. Caratelli, F. Cavanna, G. Cerati, A. Chappell, Y. Chen, J. Conrad, M. Convery, L. Cooper-Troendle, J. I. Crespo-Anadón, R. Cross, M. Tutto, S. Dennis, P. Detje, R. Diurba, Z. Djurcic, K. Duffy, S. Dytman, B. Eberly, P. Englezos, A. Ereditato, J. Evans, C. Fang, B. Fleming, W. Foreman, D. Franco, A. Furmanski, F. Gao, D. Garcia-Gamez, S. Gardiner, G. Ge, S. Gollapinni, E. Gramellini, P. Green, H. Greenlee, L. Gu, W. Gu, R. Guenette, P. Guzowski, L. Hagaman, M. Handley, O. Hen, C. Hilgenberg, G. Horton-Smith, A. Hussain, B. Irwin, M. Ismail, C. James, X. Ji, J. Jo, R. Johnson, Y. Jwa, D. Kalra, G. Karagiorgi, W. Ketchum, M. Kirby, T. Kobilarcik, N. Lane, J. Li, Y. Li, K. Lin, B. Littlejohn, L. Liu, W. Louis, X. Luo, T. Mahmud, C. Mariani, D. Marsden, J. Marshall, N. Martinez, D. A. Caicedo, S. Martynenko, A. Mastbaum, I. Mawby, N. McConkey, L. Mellet, J. Mendez, J. Micallef, K. Mistry, T. Mohayai, A. Mogan, M. Mooney, A. Moor, C. Moore, L. Lepin, M. Moudgalya, S. Babu, D. Naples, A. Navrer-Agasson, N. Nayak, M. Nebot-Guinot, C. Nguyen, J. Nowak, N. Oza, O. Palamara, N. Pallat, V. Paolone, A. Papadopoulou, Vicky Papavassiliou, H. Parkinson, S. Pate, N. Patel, Z. Pavlovic, E. Piasetzky, K. Pletcher, I. Pophale, X. Qian, J. Raaf, V. Radeka, A. Rafique, M. Reggiani-Guzzo, J. Rondon, M. Rosenberg, M. Ross-Lonergan, I. Safa, D. Schmitz, A. Schukraft, W. Seligman, M. Shaevitz, R. Sharankova, J. Shi, E. Snider, M. Soderberg, S. Soldner-Rembold, J. Spitz, M. Stancari, J. John, T. Strauss, A. Szelc, N. Taniuchi, K. Terao, C.Thorpe, D. Torbunov, D. Totani, M. Toups, A. Trettin, Y. Tsai, J. Tyler, M. Uchida, T. Usher, B. Viren, J. Wang, M. Weber, H. Wei, A. White, S. Wolbers, T. Wongjirad, M. Wospakrik, K. Wresilo, W. Wu, E. Yandel, T. Yang, L. Yates, H. Yu, G. Zeller, J. Zennamo, C. Zhang

/ Abstract

This article presents the first search for neutrino-induced neutral current coherent single-photon production (NC coherent 1$\gamma$). The search makes use of data from the MicroBooNE 85-tonne active volume liquid argon time projection chamber detector, situated in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), with an average neutrino energy of $\langle E_{\nu}\rangle \sim 0.8$ GeV. A targeted selection of candidate neutrino interactions with a single photon-like electromagnetic shower in the final state and no visible vertex activity was developed to search for the NC coherent 1$\gamma$ process, along with two auxiliary selections used to constrain the dominant background from NC$\pi^0$ production. With an integrated exposure of $6.87 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target delivered by the BNB, we set the world's first limit for this rare process, corresponding to an upper limit on the flux-averaged cross section of $\sigma<1.49 \times 10^{-41}\text{cm}^2$ at 90\% C.L.