Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75: 155
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3378-9

Special Article - Tools for Experiment and Theory

A novel technique for the measurement of the electron neutrino cross section

¹ I.N.F.N., Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Frascati, Rome, Italy
² I.N.F.N., Sezione di Roma, Rome, Italy
³ Department of Physics, University of Milano-Bicocca and INFN, Sezione di Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

^* e-mail: francesco.terranova@cern.ch

Received: 22 December 2014
Accepted: 30 March 2015
Published online: 21 April 2015

Abstract

Absolute neutrino cross section measurements are presently limited by uncertainties on fluxes. In this paper, we propose a technique that is based on the reconstruction of large angle positrons in the decay tunnel to identify three-body semileptonic decays. This tagging facility operated in positron counting mode (“event count mode”) can be employed to determine the absolute flux at the neutrino detector with precision. Facilities operated in “event by event tag mode” i.e. tagged neutrino beams that exploit the time coincidence of the positron at source and the interaction at the detector, are also discussed.