Measurement of D*(+) production in charged-current neutrino interactions

During the years 1994-1997, the emulsion target of the CHORUS detector was exposed to the wide-band neutrino beam of the CERN SPS of 27 GeV average neutrino energy. In total about 100 000 charged-current neutrino interactions were located in the nuclear emulsion target and fully reconstructed. A high-statistics sample of neutrino interactions with a Do in the final state was collected. Using the decay mode D*(+) -> D(0)pi(+) a production cross-section measurement of the D*+ in neutrinonucleon charged-current interactions was performed. The low Q-value of the decay was used to isolate a sample of candidate events containing a positive hadron with a small PT with respect to the DO direction. A signal of 22.1 +/- 5.5 D*+ events was obtained. The D*(+) production cross-section relative to the D-0 production cross-section, sigma(D*(+))/sigma (D-0), was estimated to be 0.38 +/- 0.09(stat) +/- 0.05(syst). From this result, the fraction of Do's produced via the decay of a D* was deduced to be 0.63 +/- 0.17. The D*(+) production cross-section relative to the nu(mu) charged-current interaction, sigma(D*(+))/sigma(CC), was estimated to be [1.02 +/- 0.25(stat) +/- 0.15(syst)]%. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. RI Ludovici, Lucio/F-5917-2011; De Rosa, Gianfranca/E-8737-2012; Fiorillo, Giuliana/A-2248-2012