A measurement of neutrino induced neutral current Neutral pion production cross section with the nova Near detector

Abstract

The NOvA experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment that uses two functionally identical detectors. The NOvA near detector is situated at Fermilab and the NOvA far detector is located 810 km away in northern Minnesota. The NOvA near detector is used to study the production cross-section of neutral current and#120587; 0 events. These events represent an important background for the experiments looking for and#120584; e appearance. So, it is important to constrain this background. The flux-averaged neutral current and#120587; 0 production cross-section is reported. We also report the differential cross-section w.r.t final state neutral pion kinematics. Additionally, simulation studies are carried out where we look systematically at various ways to improve the neutrino yield for the NOvA off-axis experiment.