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Sampling off-axis neutrino fluxes with the short-baseline near detector

P. Abratenko39, R. Acciarri13, C. Adams1, L. Aliaga-Soplin38, O. Alterkait39, R. Alvarez-Garrote7, D. Andrade Aldana16, C. Andreopoulos21, A. Antonakis4 et al. (SBND Collaboration*)

A. Antonakis4, L. Arellano24, J. Asaadi38, S. Balasubramanian27, A. Barnard28, V. Basque13, J. Bateman24,17, A. Beever33, E. Belchior23, M. Betancourt13, A. Bhat6, M. Bishai3, A. Blake20, B. Bogart25, D. Brailsford20, A. Brandt38, S. Brickner4, M. B. Brunetti19, L. Camilleri9, D. Caratelli4, D. Carber8, B. Carlson14, M. F. Carneiro3, R. Castillo38, F. Cavanna13, A. Chappell41, H. Chen3, S. Chung9, M. F. Cicala42, R. Coackley20, J. I. Crespo-Anadón7, C. Cuesta7, Y. Dabburi31, O. Dalager13, M. Dall’Olio38, R. Darby34, M. Del Tutto13, Z. Djurcic1, V. do Lago Pimentel5, S. Dominguez-Vidales7, M. Dubnowski30, K. Duffy28, S. Dytman13, A. Ereditato6, J. J. Evans24, A. Ezeribe33, C. Fan14, A. Filkins35, B. Fleming6,13, W. Foreman22, D. Franco6, G. Fricano13,29, I. Furic14, A. Furmanski26, S. Gao3, D. Garcia-Gamez15, S. Gardiner13, G. Ge9, I. Gil-Botella7, S. Gollapinni22,36, P. Green28, W. C. Griffith34, P. Guzowski24, L. Hagaman9, A. Hamer10, P. Hamilton17, R. Harnik13, A. Hergenhan17, M. Hernandez-Morquecho16, C. Hilgenberg26, P. Holanda5, B. Howard13, Z. Imani39, C. James13, R. S. Jones33, M. Jung6, T. Junk13, D. Kalra9, G. Karagiorgi9, L. Kashur8, K. J. Kelly37, W. Ketchum13, M. King6, J. Klein30, L. Kotsiopoulou10, S. Kr Das34, T. Kroupová30, V. A. Kudryavtsev33, N. Lane24,17, J. Larkin3, H. Lay33, R. LaZur8, J.-Y. Li13, K. Lin32, B. R. Littlejohn16, L. Liu13, W. C. Louis22, X. Lu41, X. Luo4, A. Machado5, P. Machado13, C. Mariani40, F. Marinho18, J. Marshall41, A. Mastbaum32, K. Mavrokoridis21, N. McConkey31, B. McCusker20, J. Mclaughlin16, D. Mendez3, M. Mooney8, A. F. Moor33, G. Moreno Granados40, C. A. Moura11, J. Mueller13, S. Mulleriababu2, A. Navrer-Agasson17, M. Nebot-Guinot10, V. C. L. Nguyen4, F. J. Nicolas-Arnaldos38, J. Nowak20, S. B. Oh13, N. Oza9, O. Palamara13, N. Pallat26, V. Pandey13, A. Papadopoulou22, H. B. Parkinson10, J. Paton13, L. Paulucci18, Z. Pavlovic13, D. Payne21, L. Pelegrina Gutiérrez15, O. L. G. Peres5, J. Plows21, F. Psihas13, G. Putnam13, X. Qian3, R. Rajagopalan35, P. Ratoff20, H. Ray14, M. Reggiani-Guzzo10, M. Roda21, J. Romeo-Araujo7, M. Ross-Lonergan9, N. Rowe6, P. Roy40, I. Safa9, A. Sanchez-Castillo15, P. Sanchez-Lucas15, D. W. Schmitz6, A. Schneider22, A. Schukraft13, H. Scott33, E. Segreto5, J. Sensenig30, M. Shaevitz9, B. Slater21, J. Smith3, M. Soares-Nunes13, M. Soderberg35, S. Söldner-Rembold17, J. Spitz25, M. Stancari13, T. Strauss13, A. M. Szelc10, C. Thorpe24, D. Totani8, M. Toups13, C. Touramanis21, L. Tung6, G. A. Valdiviesso12, R. G. Van de Water22, A. Vázquez Ramos15, L. Wan13, M. Weber2, H. Wei23, T. Wester6, A. White6, A. Wilkinson41, P. Wilson13, T. Wongjirad39, E. Worcester3, M. Worcester3, S. Yadav38, E. Yandel22, T. Yang13, L. Yates13, B. Yu3, H. Yu3, J. Yu38, B. Zamorano15, J. Zennamo13, and C. Zhang3 (SBND Collaboration*)

  • 1Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 60439, USA
  • 2Universität Bern, Bern CH-3012, Switzerland
  • 3Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
  • 4University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA
  • 5Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo 13083-970, Brazil
  • 6Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
  • 7CIEMAT, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas, Madrid E-28040, Spain
  • 8Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA
  • 9Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
  • 10University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom
  • 11Universidade Federal do ABC, Santo André, São Paulo 09210-580, Brazil
  • 12Universidade Federal de Alfenas, Poços de Caldas, Minas Gerais 37715-400, Brazil
  • 13Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA
  • 14University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA
  • 15Universidad de Granada, Granada E-18071, Spain
  • 16Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois 60616, USA
  • 17Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
  • 18Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica, São José dos Campos, São Paulo 12228-900, Brazil
  • 19University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA
  • 20Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YW, United Kingdom
  • 21University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZE, United Kingdom
  • 22Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
  • 23Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803, USA
  • 24University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom
  • 25University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA
  • 26University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
  • 27Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075, USA
  • 28University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RH, United Kingdom
  • 29Università degli Studi di Palermo, Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, I-90123 Palermo, Italy
  • 30University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
  • 31Queen Mary University of London, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom
  • 32Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA
  • 33University of Sheffield, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Sheffield S3 7RH, United Kingdom
  • 34University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RH, United Kingdom
  • 35Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA
  • 36University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA
  • 37Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA
  • 38University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA
  • 39Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA
  • 40Center for Neutrino Physics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24060, USA
  • 41University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom
  • 42University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom

  • *Contact author: sbnd-info@fnal.gov
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 072007 – Published 13 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hc3v-tqdb

Abstract

The short-baseline near detector (SBND), the near detector in the short-baseline neutrino program at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, is located just 110 m from the booster neutrino beam target. Thanks to this close proximity, relative to its 4  m×4  m front face, neutrinos enter SBND over a range of angles from 0° to approximately 1.6°, enabling the detector to sample variations in the neutrino flux as a function of the angle—a technique known as precision reaction-independent spectrum measurement (PRISM), referred to here as SBND-PRISM. In this paper, we show how muon- and electron-neutrino fluxes vary as a function of the neutrino beam axis angle and how this can be exploited to expand the physics potential of SBND. We make use of a model that predicts an angle-dependent electron-neutrino excess signal to illustrate this effect, such as νμ→νe oscillations. We present how SBND-PRISM provides a method to add robustness against uncertainties in cross-section modeling and, more generally, uncertainties that do not depend on the spatial position of neutrino interaction inside the detector. The fluxes, along with their associated covariance matrices, are made publicly available with this publication.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 072007– Published 13 April, 2026
  • Received 27 August 2025
  • Accepted 11 March 2026
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