This article presents the first search for neutrino-induced neutral current coherent single-photon production (NC coherent 1γ). The search makes use of data from the MicroBooNE 85-tonne active volume liquid argon time projection chamber detector, situated in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB), with an average neutrino energy of ⟨Eν ⟩ ∼0.8 GeV. A targeted selection of candidate neutrino interactions with a single photon-like electromagnetic shower in the final state and no visible vertex activity was developed to search for the NC coherent 1γ process, along with two auxiliary selections used to constrain the dominant background from NCπ0 production. With an integrated exposure of 6.87 × 1020 protons on target delivered by the BNB, we set the world’s first limit for this rare process, corresponding to an upper limit on the flux-averaged cross section of σ < 1.49 × 10−41cm2 at 90% C.L.
Links
A link to the paper is available at arXiv:2502.06091.
The full set of single-photon results can be found on this page.