A search for Supernova Relic Neutrinos ν¯e’s is first conducted via inverse-beta-decay by tagging neutron capture on hydrogen at Super-Kamiokande-IV. The neutron tagging efficiency is determined to ...be (17.74±0.04stat.±1.05sys.)%, while the corresponding accidental background probability is (1.06±0.01stat.±0.18sys.)%. Using 960days of data, we obtain 13 inverse-beta-decay candidates in the range of Eν¯e between 13.3MeV and 31.3MeV. All of the observed candidates are attributed to background. Upper limits at 90% C.L. are calculated in the absence of a signal.
We have searched for proton decays into a charged antilepton (e+, μ+) plus a meson (η, ρ0, ω) and for neutron decays into a charged antilepton (e+, μ+) plus a meson (π−, ρ−) using Super-Kamiokande ...I-IV data, corresponding to 0.316 megaton·years of exposure. This measurement updates the previous published result by using 2.26 times more data and improved analysis methods. No significant evidence for nucleon decay is observed and lower limits on the partial lifetime of the nucleon are obtained. The limits range from 3×1031 to 1×1034 years at 90% confidence level, depending on the decay mode.
Cosmic-ray-muon spallation-induced radioactive isotopes with beta decays are one of the major backgrounds for solar, reactor, and supernova relic neutrino experiments. Unlike in scintillator, ...production yields for cosmogenic backgrounds in water have not been exclusively measured before, yet they are becoming more and more important in next generation neutrino experiments designed to search for rare signals. We have analyzed the low-energy trigger data collected at Super-Kamiokande IV in order to determine the production rates of B super(12), N super(12), N super(16), Be super(11), Li super(9), He super(8), C super(9), Li super(8), B super(8), and C super(15). These rates were extracted from fits to time differences between parent muons and subsequent daughter beta 's by fixing the known isotope lifetimes. Since Li super(9) can fake an inverse-beta-decay reaction chain via a beta +n cascade decay, producing an irreducible background with detected energy up to a dozen MeV, a dedicated study is needed for evaluating its impact on future measurements; the application of a neutron tagging technique using correlated triggers was found to improve this Li super(9) measurement. The measured yields were generally found to be comparable with theoretical calculations, except the cases of the isotopes Li super(8)/B super(8) and Li super(9).
We report an indication that the elastic scattering rate of solar B8 neutrinos with electrons in the Super-Kamiokande detector is larger when the neutrinos pass through Earth during nighttime. We ...determine the day-night asymmetry, defined as the difference of the average day rate and average night rate divided by the average of those two rates, to be -3.2 ± 1.1(stat) ± 0.5(syst)%, which deviates from zero by 2.7 σ. Since the elastic scattering process is mostly sensitive to electron-flavored solar neutrinos, a nonzero day-night asymmetry implies that the flavor oscillations of solar neutrinos are affected by the presence of matter within the neutrinos' flight path. Super-Kamiokande's day-night asymmetry is consistent with neutrino oscillations for 4 × 10(-5) eV(2) ≤ Δm 2(21) ≤ 7 × 10(-5) eV(2) and large mixing values of θ12, at the 68% C.L.
Mechanisms of neutron irradiation hardening in phosphorus (P)-doped, sulfur (S)-doped, and copper (Cu)-doped ferritic alloys have been studied by applying a rate theory to the temperature dependence ...of the yield strength. Hardening behavior induced by neutron irradiation at various temperatures (473 to 711 K) is characterized in terms of the variations in athermal stress and activation energy for plasticity controlled by precipitation or solid solution, and kink-pair formation with the content and type of impurities. In P-doped alloys, neutron irradiation below 563 K brings about a remarkable increase in the athermal stress and activation energy, due to the dispersion of fine (∼1.7-nm) P-rich precipitates that is more extensive than that for the Cu-rich precipitates reported in irradiated steel. During neutron irradiation above 668 K, precipitation hardening occurs to some extent in Cu-doped and S-doped alloys, compared to small or negligible hardening in the P-doped alloys. In alloys with a low to moderate content of various dissolved impurities subjected to high-temperature irradiation, the formation of kink pairs becomes considerably difficult. Differing dynamic interactions of dissolved and precipitated impurities,
i.e
., P and Cu, with the nucleation and growth of dislocations are discussed, giving rise to irradiation hardening.
We report a search for time variations of the solar ^{8}B neutrino flux using 5804 live days of Super-Kamiokande data collected between May 31, 1996, and May 30, 2018. Super-Kamiokande measured the ...precise time of each solar neutrino interaction over 22 calendar years to search for solar neutrino flux modulations with unprecedented precision. Periodic modulations are searched for in a dataset comprising five-day interval solar neutrino flux measurements with a maximum likelihood method. We also applied the Lomb-Scargle method to this dataset to compare it with previous reports. The only significant modulation found is due to the elliptic orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The observed modulation is consistent with astronomical data: we measured an eccentricity of (1.53±0.35)%, and a perihelion shift of (-1.5±13.5) days.We report a search for time variations of the solar ^{8}B neutrino flux using 5804 live days of Super-Kamiokande data collected between May 31, 1996, and May 30, 2018. Super-Kamiokande measured the precise time of each solar neutrino interaction over 22 calendar years to search for solar neutrino flux modulations with unprecedented precision. Periodic modulations are searched for in a dataset comprising five-day interval solar neutrino flux measurements with a maximum likelihood method. We also applied the Lomb-Scargle method to this dataset to compare it with previous reports. The only significant modulation found is due to the elliptic orbit of the Earth around the Sun. The observed modulation is consistent with astronomical data: we measured an eccentricity of (1.53±0.35)%, and a perihelion shift of (-1.5±13.5) days.
We present the results of searches for nucleon decay via n→νover ¯π0 and p→νover ¯π+ using data from a combined 172.8 kt·yr exposure of Super-Kamiokande-I,-II, and-III. We set lower limits on the ...partial lifetime for each of these modes: τn→νover ¯π0>1.1×10(33) years and τp→νover ¯π+>3.9×10(32) years at a 90% confidence level.
We present the result of an indirect search for high energy neutrinos from Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) annihilation in the Sun using upward-going muon (upmu) events at ...Super-Kamiokande. Data sets from SKI-SKIII (3109.6 days) were used for the analysis. We looked for an excess of neutrino signal from the Sun as compared with the expected atmospheric neutrino background in three upmu categories: stopping, non-showering, and showering. No significant excess was observed. The 90% C.L. upper limits of upmu flux induced by WIMPs of 100 GeV c-2 were 6.4 X 10--15 cm--2 s--1 and 4.0 X 10--15 cm--2 s--1 for the soft and hard annihilation channels, respectively. These limits correspond to upper limits of 4.5 X 10--39 cm--2 and 2.7 X 10--40 cm--2 for spin-dependent WIMP-nucleon scattering cross sections in the soft and hard annihilation channels, respectively.
Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data were fit with an unbinned maximum likelihood method to search for the appearance of tau leptons resulting from the interactions of oscillation-generated tau ...neutrinos in the detector. Relative to the expectation of unity, the tau normalization is found to be 1.42 ± 0.35(stat)(-0.12)(+0.14)(syst) excluding the no-tau-appearance hypothesis, for which the normalization would be zero, at the 3.8σ level. We estimate that 180.1 ± 44.3(stat)(-15.2)(+17.8) (syst) tau leptons were produced in the 22.5 kton fiducial volume of the detector by tau neutrinos during the 2806 day running period. In future analyses, this large sample of selected tau events will allow the study of charged current tau neutrino interaction physics with oscillation produced tau neutrinos.
We report the results of a neutrino search in Super-Kamiokande (SK) for coincident signals with the first detected gravitational wave (GW) produced by a binary neutron-star merger, GW170817, which ...was followed by a short gamma-ray burst, GRB170817A, and a kilonova/macronova. We searched for coincident neutrino events in the range from 3.5 MeV to ∼100 PeV, in a time window 500 s around the gravitational wave detection time, as well as during a 14-day period after the detection. No significant neutrino signal was observed for either time window. We calculated 90% confidence level upper limits on the neutrino fluence for GW170817. From the upward-going-muon events in the energy region above 1.6 GeV, the neutrino fluence limit is 16.0 − 0.6 + 0.7 ( 21.3 − 0.8 + 1.1 ) cm−2 for muon neutrinos (muon antineutrinos), with an error range of 5° around the zenith angle of NGC4993, and the energy spectrum is under the assumption of an index of −2. The fluence limit for neutrino energies less than 100 MeV, for which the emission mechanism would be different than for higher-energy neutrinos, is also calculated. It is 6.6 × 107 cm−2 for anti-electron neutrinos under the assumption of a Fermi-Dirac spectrum with average energy of 20 MeV.