skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Improved constraint on the MINERνA medium energy neutrino flux using ν¯e−→ν¯e− data
More Like this
  1. We search for the rare decay B + K + ν ν ¯ in a 362 fb 1 sample of electron-positron collisions at the ϒ ( 4 S ) resonance collected with the Belle II detector at the SuperKEKB collider. We use the inclusive properties of the accompanying B meson in ϒ ( 4 S ) B B ¯ events to suppress background from other decays of the signal B candidate and light-quark pair production. We validate the measurement with an auxiliary analysis based on a conventional hadronic reconstruction of the accompanying B meson. For background suppression, we exploit distinct signal features using machine learning methods tuned with simulated data. The signal-reconstruction efficiency and background suppression are validated through various control channels. The branching fraction is extracted in a maximum likelihood fit. Our inclusive and hadronic analyses yield consistent results for the B + K + ν ν ¯ branching fraction of [ 2.7 ± 0.5 ( stat ) ± 0.5 ( syst ) ] × 10 5 and [ 1.1 0.8 + 0.9 ( stat ) 0.5 + 0.8 ( syst ) ] × 10 5 , respectively. Combining the results, we determine the branching fraction of the decay B + K + ν ν ¯ to be [ 2.3 ± 0.5 ( stat ) 0.4 + 0.5 ( syst ) ] × 10 5 , providing the first evidence for this decay at 3.5 standard deviations. The combined result is 2.7 standard deviations above the standard model expectation. Published by the American Physical Society2024 
    more » « less