Abstract
Neutrino-induced charged-current coherent kaon production is a rare, inelastic electroweak process that brings a 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 , , 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 significance.
- Received 8 June 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.061802
© 2016 American Physical Society