Speaker
Description
At upcoming neutrino oscillation experiments, a precise understanding of the neutrino flux is imperative for oscillation studies with sub-percent precision, even with a near detector. Current uncertainties on the neutrino flux are dominated by hadron production uncertainties, making their precise determination crucial. We propose a novel approach to investigate hadron production using near detectors.
Our approach leverages the angular distributions of mesons with different masses - lighter pions will remain along the beam axis compared to heavier kaons. This property creates a distinct off-axis angle dependence in the resulting neutrino flux which, when measured at multiple off-axis positions, can reveal valuable information about the underlying hadron flux composition.
As a case-study we focus on DUNE-PRISM, the movable near detector complex of DUNE, and demonstrate that this approach can enhance the precision of the standard oscillation parameter measurements.
