Measurements of Pion and Muon Nuclear Capture at Rest on Argon in the LArIAT Experiment
We report the measurement of the final-state products of negative pion and muon nuclear capture at rest on argon by the LArIAT experiment at the Fermilab Test Beam Facility. We measure a population of isolated MeV-scale energy depositions, or blips, in 296 LArIAT events containing tracks from stopping low-momentum pions and muons. The average numbers of visible blips are measured to be 0.74±0.19 and 1.86±0.17 near muon and pion track endpoints, respectively. The 3.6σ statistically significant difference in blip content between muons and pions provides the first demonstration of a new method of pion-muon discrimination in neutrino liquid argon time projection chamber experiments. LArIAT Monte Carlo simulations predict substantially higher average blip counts for negative muon (1.22±0.08) and pion (2.34±0.09) nuclear captures. We attribute this difference to geant4's inaccurate simulation of the nuclear capture process.
Authors
- F. d. M. Blaszczyk
- J. L. Raaf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-929X)
- M. Backfish (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0740-3980)
- A. M. Szelc (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4174-4407)
- T. Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3190-9941)
- E. Gramellini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1776-1941)
- J. Asaadi
- W. Badgett (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3790-8878)
- D. W. Schmitz
- M. Söderberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7769-2154)
- E. Kemp (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1300)
- R. Acciarri (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-1669-5369)
- T. Kobilarcik
- A. Marchionni
- M. Hernandez-Morquecho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8246-4463)
- B. R. Littlejohn (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6912-9684)
- E. Kearns (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1781-150X)
- J. Ho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4119-4262)
- R. A. Gomes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0278-4876)
- W. Foreman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6555-6948)
- Vincent Basque (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4600-0984)
- X. Luo
- C. A. Moura
- M. King (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5639-6310)
- J. John
Institutions
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US)
- Illinois Institute of Technology (US)
- Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) (BR)
- The University of Texas at Arlington (US)
- University of California System (US)
- Yale University (US)
- University of Chicago (US)
- Universidade Federal de Goiás (BR)
- Syracuse University (US)
- Universidade Federal do ABC (BR)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-04-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.134.131801
- Primary Topic
- Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Royal Society
- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
- Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico
- Narodowe Centrum Nauki
- Office of Science
- Science and Technology Facilities Council
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
- Fermilab