Eur. Phys. J. C (2019) 79: 100
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6583-0

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

Measurements of , and proton double differential yields from the surface of the T2K replica target for incoming 31 GeV/c protons with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS

NA61/SHINE Collaboration

¹ National Nuclear Research Center, Baku, Azerbaijan
² Faculty of Physics, University of Sofia, Sofia, Bulgaria
³ Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
⁴ LPNHE, University of Paris VI and VII, Paris, France
⁵ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
⁶ Fachhochschule Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
⁷ University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
⁸ Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
⁹ University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
¹⁰ Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce, Kielce, Poland
¹¹ H. Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland
¹² National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland
¹³ Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
¹⁴ AGH, University of Science and Technology, Cracow, Poland
¹⁵ University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland
¹⁶ University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
¹⁷ University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland
¹⁸ Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
¹⁹ Institute for Nuclear Research, Moscow, Russia
²⁰ Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
²¹ National Research Nuclear University (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), Moscow, Russia
²² St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
²³ University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
²⁴ University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
²⁵ Fermilab, Batavia, USA
²⁶ University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
²⁷ University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
²⁸ Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, USA
²⁹ Institute for Particle and Nuclear Studies, KEK, Tsukuba, Japan
³⁰ Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan
³¹ TRIUMF, Vancouver, BC, Canada
³² Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada
³³ Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
³⁴ Department of Physics, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
³⁵ University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

^* e-mail: Boris.Popov@cern.ch

Received: 16 August 2018
Accepted: 10 January 2019
Published online: 31 January 2019

Abstract

Measurements of the , , and proton double differential yields emitted from the surface of the 90--long carbon target (T2K replica) were performed for the incoming protons with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS using data collected during 2010 run. The double differential yields were measured with increased precision compared to the previously published NA61/SHINE results, while the and proton yields were obtained for the first time. A strategy for dealing with the dependence of the results on the incoming proton beam profile is proposed. The purpose of these measurements is to reduce significantly the (anti)neutrino flux uncertainty in the T2K long-baseline neutrino experiment by constraining the production of (anti)neutrino ancestors coming from the T2K target.