| Associated Charm Production in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions (2008) | |||||||||
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Abstract | |||||||||
| In this paper a search for associated charm production both in neutral and charged current $\nu$-nucleus interactions is presented. The improvement of automatic scanning systems in the \mbox{CHORUS} experiment allows an efficient search to be performed in emulsion for short-lived particles. Hence a search for rare processes, like the associated charm production, becomes possible through the observation of the double charm-decay topology with a very low background. About 130,000 $\nu$ interactions located in the emulsion target have been analysed. Three events with two charm decays have been observed in the neutral-current sample with an estimated background of 0.18$\pm$0.05. The relative rate of the associated charm cross-section in deep inelastic $\nu$ interactions, $\sigma(c\bar{c}\nu)$/$\sigma_\mathrm{NC}^\mathrm{DIS}= (3.62^{+2.95}_{-2.42}(\mbox{stat})\pm 0.54(\mbox{syst}))\times 10^{-3}$ has been measured. One event with two charm decays has been observed in charged-current $\nu_\mu$ interactions with an estimated background of 0.18$\pm$0.06 and the upper limit on associated charm production in charged-current interactions at 90\% C.L. has been found to be $\sigma (c\bar{c} \mu^-)/\sigma_\mathrm{CC} < 9.69 \times 10^{-4}$. | |||||||||
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