Measurement of D*+ production in charged-current neutrino interactions

Abstract

During the years 1994–1997, the emulsion target of the CHORUS detector was exposed to the wide-band neutrino beam of the CERN SPS of 27 GeV average neutrino energy. In total about 100 000 charged-current neutrino interactions were located in the nuclear emulsion target and fully reconstructed. A high-statistics sample of neutrino interactions with a D0 in the final state was collected. Using the decay mode D*+→D0π+ a production cross-section measurement of the D*+ in neutrino–nucleon charged-current interactions was performed. The low Q-value of the decay was used to isolate a sample of candidate events containing a positive hadron with a small pT with respect to the D0 direction. A signal of events was obtained. The D*+ production cross-section relative to the D0 production cross-section, σ(D*+)/σ(D0), was estimated to be 0.38±0.09(stat)±0.05(syst). From this result, the fraction of D0's produced via the decay of a D* was deduced to be 0.63±0.17. The D*+ production cross-section relative to the νμ charged-current interaction, σ(D*+)/σ(CC), was estimated to be [1.02±0.25(stat)±0.15(syst)]%.