Hadron production measurements for neutrino physics

Dr. Nilay Bostan; University of Notre Dame, on behalf of NA61/SHINE and EMPHATIC experiments

The determination of the accurate neutrino flux is very important for the accelerator-based neutrino experiments to understand the neutrino interactions and neutrino oscillation measurements. In these experiments, highly energetic (120 GeV) protons interact with a nuclear target to produce mesons, predominantly pions, and kaons that decay to a neutrino.  In neutrino beamlines, the largest uncertainty on the produced neutrino flux comes from the hadronic cascade model which is utilized to predict the hadron production (HP) within the target and the beamline elements. Due to the discrepancy between HP models being quite large, neutrino experiments need to use the external hadron production data to constrain the hadronic models in their simulations and estimate the neutrino flux at their detectors with better reliability. The implementation of these data significantly reduces the systematic uncertainties that arise from the hadron interactions mismodeling. 

Currently, the NA61/SHINE (CERN) and EMPHATIC (Fermilab) experiments are actively working to provide the hadron production measurements at different energies, different nuclear targets, and particle projectiles for the accelerator-based neutrino experiments. In this talk, I will briefly explain these hadron production experiments and their status.  

Nuclear and Particle Physics Seminar
Monday, December 6, 2021
2:30 PM Zoom: https://uiowa.zoom.us/j/98978729962 (no in person)