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First measurement of neutron capture multiplicity in neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielasticlike interactions using an accelerator neutrino beam

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Article number032003
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/08/2025
<mark>Journal</mark>Physical Review D
Issue number3
Volume112
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We report the first measurement of neutron capture multiplicity in neutrino-oxygen neutral-current quasielasticlike interactions at the gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande detector using the T2K neutrino beam, which has a peak energy of about 0.6 GeV. A total of 30 neutral-current quasielasticlike event candidates were selected from T2K data corresponding to an exposure of 1.76×1020 protons on target. The γ ray signals resulting from neutron captures were identified using a neural network. The flux-averaged mean neutron capture multiplicity was measured to be 1.37±0.33 (stat.)−0.27+0.17 (syst.), which is compatible within 2.3 sigma than predictions obtained using our nominal simulation. We discuss potential sources of systematic uncertainty in the prediction and demonstrate that a significant portion of this discrepancy arises from the modeling of hadron-nucleus interactions in the detector medium.