Pion emission from the T2K replica target: method, results and application

Understand

The T2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan needs precise predictions of the initial neutrino flux.

• The highest precision can be reached based on detailed measurements of hadron emission from the same target as used by T2K exposed to a proton beam of the same kinetic energy of 30 GeV.
• The corresponding data were recorded in 2007-2010 by the NA61/SHINE experiment at the CERN SPS using a replica of the T2K graphite target.
• In this paper details of the experiment, data taking, data analysis method and results from the 2007 pilot run are presented.