A narrow band neutrino beam with high precision flux measurements

The ENUBET facility is a proposed narrow band neutrino beam where lepton production is monitored at single particle level in the instrumented decay tunnel. This facility addresses simultaneously the two most important challenges for the next generation of cross section experiments: a superior control of the flux and flavor composition at source and a high level of tunability and precision in the selection of the energy of the outcoming neutrinos. We report here the latest results in the development and test of the instrumentation for the decay tunnel. Special emphasis is given to irradiation tests of the photo-sensors performed at INFN-LNL and CERN in 2017 and to the first application of polysiloxane-based scintillators in high energy physics.Comment: Poster presented at NuPhys2017 (London, 20-22 December 2017). 5 pages, 2 figure

The ENUBET Beamline

The ENUBET ERC project (2016-2021) is studying a narrow band neutrino beam where lepton production can be monitored at single particle level in an instrumented decay tunnel. This would allow to measure $\nu_{\mu}$ and $\nu_{e}$ cross sections with a precision improved by about one order of magnitude compared to present results. In this proceeding we describe a first realistic design of the hadron beamline based on a dipole coupled to a pair of quadrupole triplets along with the optimisation guidelines and the results of a simulation based on G4beamline. A static focusing design, though less efficient than a horn-based solution, results several times more efficient than originally expected. It works with slow proton extractions reducing drastically pile-up effects in the decay tunnel and it paves the way towards a time-tagged neutrino beam. On the other hand a horn-based transferline would ensure higher yields at the tunnel entrance. The first studies conducted at CERN to implement the synchronization between a few ms proton extraction and a horn pulse of 2-10 ms are also described.Comment: Poster presented at NuPhys2018 (London 19-21 December 2018). 4 pages, 3 figure

Shashlik calorimeters: Novel compact prototypes for the ENUBET experiment

We summarize in this paper the detector R&D performed in the framework of the ERC ENUBET Project. We discuss in particular the latest results on longitudinally segmented shashlik calorimeters and the first HEP application of polysiloxane-based scintillators

Status of the ENUBET Project

The ENUBET Collaboration is designing the first “monitored neutrino beam”: a beam with an unprecedented control of the flux, energy and flavor of neutrinos at source. In particular, ENUBET monitors the νe production mostly by the detection of large angle positrons from three body semileptonic decays of kaons: K+ → e+π0νe. In this paper, we present the status of the Project and the 2018-2019 advances on proton extraction, transfer line, particle identification in the decay tunnel and beam performance

Monitored neutrino beams and the next generation of high precision cross section experiments

The main source of systematic uncertainty on neutrino cross section measurements at the GeV scale originates from the poor knowledge of the initial flux. The reduction of this uncertainty to 1% can be achieved through the monitoring of charged leptons produced in association with neutrinos. The goal of the ENUBET ERC project is to prove the feasibility of such a monitored neutrino beam. In this contribution, the final results of the ERC project, together with the complete assessment of the feasibility of its concept, are presented. An overview of the detector technology for a next generation of high precision neutrino-nucleus cross section measurements, to be performed with the ENUBET neutrino beam, is also given

Design and performance of the ENUBET monitored neutrino beam

The ENUBET project is aimed at designing and experimentally demonstrating the concept of monitored neutrino beams. These novel beams are enhanced by an instrumented decay tunnel, whose detectors reconstruct large-angle charged leptons produced in the tunnel and give a direct estimate of the neutrino flux at the source. These facilities are thus the ideal tool for high-precision neutrino cross-section measurements at the GeV scale because they offer superior control of beam systematics with respect to existing facilities. In this paper, we present the first end-to-end design of a monitored neutrino beam capable of monitoring lepton production at the single particle level. This goal is achieved by a new focusing system without magnetic horns, a 20 m normal-conducting transfer line for charge and momentum selection, and a 40 m tunnel instrumented with cost-effective particle detectors. Employing such a design, we show that percent precision in cross-section measurements can be achieved at the CERN SPS complex with existing neutrino detectors

Monitored neutrino beams: NP06/ENUBET

The main source of systematic uncertainty on neutrino cross section measurements at the GeV scale is represented by the poor knowledge of the initial flux. The goal of cutting down this uncertainty to 1% can be achieved through the monitoring of charged leptons produced in association with neutrinos, by properly instrumenting the decay region of a conventional narrow-band neutrino beam. The ENUBET project has been funded by the ERC in 2016 to prove the feasibility of such a monitored neutrino beam and is cast in the framework of the CERN Neutrino Platform (NP06) and the Physics Beyond Colliders initiative. This contribution reports the final design of the horn-less beamline able to deliver a meson yield large enough to perform a ve cross section measurement at 1% precision in about 3 years of data taking at CERN-SPS with a ProtoDUNE-like detector. The final configuration of the tunnel instrumentation and its implementation on a large-scale prototype, the Demonstrator, are also described. Finally the particle identification performance is presented together with the first assessment of the lepton monitoring impact in the reduction of the hadroproduction systematics on the neutrino flux

Sensitivity projections for a dual-phase argon TPC optimized for light dark matter searches through the ionization channel

Dark matter lighter than 10  GeV/c2 encompasses a promising range of candidates. A conceptual design for a new detector, DarkSide-LowMass, is presented, based on the DarkSide-50 detector and progress toward DarkSide-20k, optimized for a low-threshold electron-counting measurement. Sensitivity to light dark matter is explored for various potential energy thresholds and background rates. These studies show that DarkSide-LowMass can achieve sensitivity to light dark matter down to the solar neutrino fog for GeV-scale masses and significant sensitivity down to 10  MeV/c2 considering the Migdal effect or interactions with electrons. Requirements for optimizing the detector’s sensitivity are explored, as are potential sensitivity gains from modeling and mitigating spurious electron backgrounds that may dominate the signal at the lowest energies