Evidence for anti-muon-neutrino ---> anti-electron-neutrino oscillations from the LSND experiment at LAMPF
/ Authors
C. Athanassopoulos, L. Auerbach, R. L. Burman, I. Cohen, D. Caldwell, B. Dieterle, J. Donahue, A. Eisner, A. Fazely, F. Federspiel
and 28 more authors
G. Garvey, M. Gray, R. Gunasingha, R. Imlay, K. Johnston, H. Kim, W. Louis, R. Majkic, J. Margulies, K. McIlhany, W. Metcalf, G. Mills, R. Reeder, V. Sandberg, D. Smith, I. Stancu, W. Strossman, R. Tayloe, G. Vandalen, W. Vernon, N. Wadia, J. Waltz, Y. Wang, D. H. White, D. Works, Y. Xiao, S. Yellin, Lsnd Collaboration
/ Abstract
A search for $\bar\nu_{\mu}\to \bar\nu_{e}$ oscillations has been conducted at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility by using $\bar\nu_\mu$ from $\mu^+$ decay at rest. The $\bar\nu_e$ are detected via the reaction $\bar\nu_e\,p \rightarrow e^{+}\,n$, correlated with a $\gamma$ from $np\rightarrow d\gamma$ ($2.2\,{\rm MeV}$). The use of tight cuts to identify $e^+$ events with correlated $\gamma$ rays yields 22 events with $e^+$ energy between 36 and $60\,{\rm MeV}$ and only $4.6 \pm 0.6$ background events. A fit to the $e^+$ events between 20 and $60\,{\rm MeV}$ yields a total excess of $51.8^{+18.7}_{-16.9} \pm 8.0$ events. If attributed to $\bar \nu_\mu \rightarrow \bar \nu_e$ oscillations, this corresponds to an oscillation probability of ($0.31^{+0.11}_{-0.10} \pm 0.05$)\%.
Journal: Physical Review Letters