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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2020). Measurement of the charged-current electron (anti-)neutrino inclusive cross-sections at the T2K off-axis near detector ND280. J. High Energy Phys., 10(10), 114–43pp.
Abstract: The electron (anti-)neutrino component of the T2K neutrino beam constitutes the largest background in the measurement of electron (anti-)neutrino appearance at the far detector. The electron neutrino scattering is measured directly with the T2K off-axis near detector, ND280. The selection of the electron (anti-)neutrino events in the plastic scintillator target from both neutrino and anti-neutrino mode beams is discussed in this paper. The flux integrated single differential charged-current inclusive electron (anti-)neutrino cross-sections, d sigma/dp and d sigma/d cos(theta), and the total cross-sections in a limited phase-space in momentum and scattering angle (p 300 MeV/c and theta <= 45 degrees) are measured using a binned maximum likelihood fit and compared to the neutrino Monte Carlo generator predictions, resulting in good agreement.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2019). Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K. J. Phys. G, 46(8), 08LT01–16pp.
Abstract: Neutrino neutral-current (NC) induced single photon production is a sub-leading order process for accelerator-based neutrino beam experiments including T2K. It is, however, an important process to understand because it is a background for electron (anti)neutrino appearance oscillation experiments. Here, we performed the first search of this process below 1 GeV using the fine-grained detector at the T2K ND280 off-axis near detector. By reconstructing single photon kinematics from electron-positron pairs, we achieved 95% pure gamma ray sample from 5.738 x 10(20) protons-on-targets neutrino mode data. We do not find positive evidence of NC induced single photon production in this sample. We set the model-dependent upper limit on the cross-section for this process, at 0.114 x 10(-38) cm(2) (90% C.L.) per nucleon, using the J-PARC off-axis neutrino beam with an average energy of < E-v > similar to 0.6 GeV. This is the first limit on this process below 1 GeV which is important for current and future oscillation experiments looking for electron neutrino appearance oscillation signals.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2018). Search for CP Violation in Neutrino and Antineutrino Oscillations by the T2K Experiment with 2.2 x 10(21) Protons on Target. Phys. Rev. Lett., 121(17), 171802–9pp.
Abstract: The T2K experiment measures muon neutrino disappearance and electron neutrino appearance in accelerator-produced neutrino and antineutrino beams. With an exposure of 14.7(7.6) x 10(20) protons on target in the neutrino (antineutrino) mode, 89 nu(e) candidates and seven anti-nu(e) candidates are observed, while 67.5 and 9.0 are expected for delta(CP) = 0 and normal mass ordering. The obtained 2 sigma confidence interval for the CP-violating phase, delta(CP), does not include the CP-conserving cases (delta(CP) = 0, pi). The best-fit values of other parameters are sin(2) theta(23) = 0.526(-0.036)(+0.032) and Delta m(32)(2) = 2.463(-0.070)(+0.071) x 10(-3) eV(2)/c(4).
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2020). Search for Electron Antineutrino Appearance in a Long-Baseline Muon Antineutrino Beam. Phys. Rev. Lett., 124(16), 161802–8pp.
Abstract: Electron antineutrino appearance is measured by the T2K experiment in an accelerator-produced antineutrino beam, using additional neutrino beam operation to constrain parameters of the Pontecorvo-Maki-Nakagawa-Sakata (PMNS) mixing matrix. T2K observes 15 candidate electron antineutrino events with a background expectation of 9.3 events. Including information from the kinematic distribution of observed events, the hypothesis of no electron antineutrino appearance is disfavored with a significance of 2.40s and no discrepancy between data and PMNS predictions is found. A complementary analysis that introduces an additional free parameter which allows non-PMNS values of electron neutrino and antineutrino appearance also finds no discrepancy between data and PMNS predictions.
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T2K Collaboration(Abe, K. et al), Antonova, M., Cervera-Villanueva, A., Fernandez, P., Izmaylov, A., & Novella, P. (2020). Constraint on the matter-antimatter symmetry-violating phase in neutrino oscillations. Nature, 580(7803), 339–344.
Abstract: The charge-conjugation and parity-reversal (CP) symmetry of fundamental particles is a symmetry between matter and antimatter. Violation of this CP symmetry was first observed in 1964(1), and CP violation in the weak interactions of quarks was soon established(2). Sakharov proposed(3) that CP violation is necessary to explain the observed imbalance of matter and antimatter abundance in the Universe. However, CP violation in quarks is too small to support this explanation. So far, CP violation has not been observed in non-quark elementary particle systems. It has been shown that CP violation in leptons could generate the matter-antimatter disparity through a process called leptogenesis(4). Leptonic mixing, which appears in the standard model's charged current interactions(5,6), provides a potential source of CP violation through a complex phase dCP, which is required by some theoretical models of leptogenesis(7-9). This CP violation can be measured in muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations and the corresponding antineutrino oscillations, which are experimentally accessible using accelerator-produced beams as established by the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) and NOvA experiments(10,11). Until now, the value of dCP has not been substantially constrained by neutrino oscillation experiments. Here we report a measurement using long-baseline neutrino and antineutrino oscillations observed by the T2K experiment that shows a large increase in the neutrino oscillation probability, excluding values of dCP that result in a large increase in the observed antineutrino oscillation probability at three standard deviations (3 sigma). The 3 sigma confidence interval for delta(CP), which is cyclic and repeats every 2p, is [-3.41, -0.03] for the so-called normal mass ordering and [-2.54, -0.32] for the inverted mass ordering. Our results indicate CP violation in leptons and our method enables sensitive searches for matter-antimatter asymmetry in neutrino oscillations using accelerator-produced neutrino beams. Future measurements with larger datasets will test whether leptonic CP violation is larger than the CP violation in quarks.
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