A first measurement of the interaction cross section of the tau neutrino

Understand

The DONuT experiment collected data in 1997 and published first results in 2000 based on four observed $\nu_\tau$ charged-current (CC) interactions.

• The final analysis of the data collected in the experiment is presented in this paper, based on $3.6 \times 10^{17}$ protons on target using the 800 GeV Tevatron beam at Fermilab.
• The number of observed $\nu_\tau$ CC interactions is 9, from a total of 578 observed neutrino interactions.
• We calculated the energy-independent part of the tau-neutrino CC cross section ($\nu + \bar \nu$), relative to the well-known $\nu_e$ and $\nu_\mu$ cross sections.