Publisher's Note: Identification of Nuclear Effects in Neutrino-Carbon Interactions at Low Three-Momentum Transfer [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 071802 (2016)]

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.071802.

Direct Measurement of Nuclear Dependence of Charged Current Quasielasticlike Neutrino Interactions Using MINERvA

Charged-current ν_{μ} interactions on carbon, iron, and lead with a final state hadronic system of one or more protons with zero mesons are used to investigate the influence of the nuclear environment on quasielasticlike interactions. The transferred four-momentum squared to the target nucleus, Q^{2}, is reconstructed based on the kinematics of the leading proton, and differential cross sections versus Q^{2} and the cross-section ratios of iron, lead, and carbon to scintillator are measured for the first time in a single experiment. The measurements show a dependence on the atomic number. While the quasielasticlike scattering on carbon is compatible with predictions, the trends exhibited by scattering on iron and lead favor a prediction with intranuclear rescattering of hadrons accounted for by a conventional particle cascade treatment. These measurements help discriminate between different models of both initial state nucleons and final state interactions used in the neutrino oscillation experiments.

Evidence for Neutral-Current Diffractive π^{0} Production from Hydrogen in Neutrino Interactions on Hydrocarbon

The MINERvA experiment observes an excess of events containing electromagnetic showers relative to the expectation from Monte Carlo simulations in neutral-current neutrino interactions with mean beam energy of 4.5 GeV on a hydrocarbon target. The excess is characterized and found to be consistent with neutral-current π^{0} production with a broad energy distribution peaking at 7 GeV and a total cross section of 0.26±0.02(stat.)±0.08(sys.)×10^{-39}  cm^{2}. The angular distribution, electromagnetic shower energy, and spatial distribution of the energy depositions of the excess are consistent with expectations from neutrino neutral-current diffractive π^{0} production from hydrogen in the hydrocarbon target. These data comprise the first direct experimental observation and constraint for a reaction that poses an important background process in neutrino-oscillation experiments searching for ν_{μ} to ν_{e} oscillations.

Evidence of Coherent K^{+} Meson Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering

Neutrino-induced charged-current coherent kaon production ν_{μ}A→μ^{-}K^{+}A is a rare, inelastic electroweak process that brings a K^{+} on shell and leaves the target nucleus intact in its ground state. This process is significantly lower in rate than the neutrino-induced charged-current coherent pion production because of Cabibbo suppression and a kinematic suppression due to the larger kaon mass. We search for such events in the scintillator tracker of MINERvA by observing the final state K^{+}, μ^{-}, and no other detector activity, and by using the kinematics of the final state particles to reconstruct the small momentum transfer to the nucleus, which is a model-independent characteristic of coherent scattering. We find the first experimental evidence for the process at 3σ significance.

Measurement of Electron Neutrino Quasielastic and Quasielasticlike Scattering on Hydrocarbon at ⟨E_{ν}⟩=3.6 GeV

The first direct measurement of electron neutrino quasielastic and quasielasticlike scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident neutrino energy has been carried out using the MINERvA detector in the NuMI beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in the electron production angle, electron energy, and Q^{2} are presented. The ratio of the quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in Q^{2} for ν_{e} with that of similarly selected ν_{μ}-induced events from the same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional treatments of charged-current ν_{e} interactions used by long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with lepton universality and are well described by the predictions of the neutrino event generator GENIE.

Identification of Nuclear Effects in Neutrino-Carbon Interactions at Low Three-Momentum Transfer

Two different nuclear-medium effects are isolated using a low three-momentum transfer subsample of neutrino-carbon scattering data from the MINERvA neutrino experiment. The observed hadronic energy in charged-current ν_{μ} interactions is combined with muon kinematics to permit separation of the quasielastic and Δ(1232) resonance processes. First, we observe a small cross section at very low energy transfer that matches the expected screening effect of long-range nucleon correlations. Second, additions to the event rate in the kinematic region between the quasielastic and Δ resonance processes are needed to describe the data. The data in this kinematic region also have an enhanced population of multiproton final states. Contributions predicted for scattering from a nucleon pair have both properties; the model tested in this analysis is a significant improvement but does not fully describe the data. We present the results as a double-differential cross section to enable further investigation of nuclear models. Improved description of the effects of the nuclear environment are required by current and future neutrino oscillation experiments.

First direct limits on lightly ionizing particles with electric charge less than e/6

While the standard model of particle physics does not include free particles with fractional charge, experimental searches have not ruled out their existence. We report results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment that give the first direct-detection limits for cosmogenically produced relativistic particles with electric charge lower than e/6. A search for tracks in the six stacked detectors of each of two of the CDMS II towers finds no candidates, thereby excluding new parameter space for particles with electric charges between e/6 and e/200.

Search for low-mass weakly interacting massive particles with SuperCDMS

We report a first search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) using the background rejection capabilities of SuperCDMS. An exposure of 577 kg days was analyzed for WIMPs with mass <30  GeV/c(2), with the signal region blinded. Eleven events were observed after unblinding. We set an upper limit on the spin-independent WIMP-nucleon cross section of 1.2×10(-42)  cm(2) at 8  GeV/c(2). This result is in tension with WIMP interpretations of recent experiments and probes new parameter space for WIMP-nucleon scattering for WIMP masses <6  GeV/c(2).

Search for low-mass weakly interacting massive particles using voltage-assisted calorimetric ionization detection in the SuperCDMS experiment

SuperCDMS is an experiment designed to directly detect weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), a favored candidate for dark matter ubiquitous in the Universe. In this Letter, we present WIMP-search results using a calorimetric technique we call CDMSlite, which relies on voltage-assisted Luke-Neganov amplification of the ionization energy deposited by particle interactions. The data were collected with a single 0.6 kg germanium detector running for ten live days at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. A low energy threshold of 170  eVee (electron equivalent) was obtained, which allows us to constrain new WIMP-nucleon spin-independent parameter space for WIMP masses below 6  GeV/c2.

Silicon detector dark matter results from the final exposure of CDMS II

We report results of a search for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS) with the silicon detectors of the CDMS II experiment. This blind analysis of 140.2 kg day of data taken between July 2007 and September 2008 revealed three WIMP-candidate events with a surface-event background estimate of 0.41(-0.08)(+0.20)(stat)(-0.24)(+0.28)(syst). Other known backgrounds from neutrons and 206Pb are limited to <0.13 and <0.08 events at the 90% confidence level, respectively. The exposure of this analysis is equivalent to 23.4 kg day for a recoil energy range of 7-100 keV for a WIMP of mass 10  GeV/c2. The probability that the known backgrounds would produce three or more events in the signal region is 5.4%. A profile likelihood ratio test of the three events that includes the measured recoil energies gives a 0.19% probability for the known-background-only hypothesis when tested against the alternative WIMP+background hypothesis. The highest likelihood occurs for a WIMP mass of 8.6  GeV/c2 and WIMP-nucleon cross section of 1.9×10(-41)  cm2.

Results from a low-energy analysis of the CDMS II germanium data

We report results from a reanalysis of data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Data taken between October 2006 and September 2008 using eight germanium detectors are reanalyzed with a lowered, 2 keV recoil-energy threshold, to give increased sensitivity to interactions from weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) with masses below ∼10  GeV/c(2). This analysis provides stronger constraints than previous CDMS II results for WIMP masses below 9  GeV/c(2) and excludes parameter space associated with possible low-mass WIMP signals from the DAMA/LIBRA and CoGeNT experiments.

Search for axions with the CDMS experiment

We report on the first axion search results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. An energy threshold of 2 keV for electron-recoil events allows a search for possible solar axion conversion into photons or local galactic axion conversion into electrons in the germanium crystal detectors. The solar axion search sets an upper limit on the Primakov coupling g(agammagamma) of 2.4x10(-9) GeV-1 at the 95% confidence level for an axion mass less than 0.1 keV/c2. This limit benefits from the first precise measurement of the absolute crystal plane orientations in this type of experiment. The galactic axion search analysis sets a world-leading experimental upper limit on the axioelectric coupling g(aee) of 1.4x10(-12) at the 90% confidence level for an axion mass of 2.5 keV/c2.