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ICPPA 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1690 (2020) 012174 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1690/1/012174

NA65 (DsTau) experiment: Tau neutrino production

study at the CERN SPS
M Yoshimoto for the NA65 Collaboration
Physics Department, Gifu University, Gifu 501-1193, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract. The NA65/DsTau experiment is an approved CERN experiment with the scope to
investigate the tau neutrino production using nuclear emulsion. The production process of tau
neutrino is important in the precise measurement of the cross-section of tau neutrinos, which
has a positive impact on other experiments. A pilot run was conducted in 2018 and the analysis
is underway. Preparations are also ongoing for physics runs in 2021 and 2022.

1. Introduction
The detection of tau neutrinos is very difficult due to the short lifetime of tau lepton which decays
into tau neutrino. The direct detection of ντ is possible with tracking detectors with high spatial
resolution, such as nuclear emulsion. The DONUT experiment observed nine ντ interactions
directly at last [1]. The OPERA experiment was conducted to search for neutrino oscillation
through νµ to ντ oscillations in an appearance mode. Ten ντ charged-current interactions were
observed, and the result then contributed to the proof of neutrino oscillation [2].
The 19 ντ interactions were observed so far, but the number is much smaller than that of the
other neutrino flavors. Therefore, the measurement error of the ντ cross-section is very large
and the detailed properties of the ντ remain unknown. If the measurement error become small,
it is possible to test symmetry of the cross-section among three neutrino flavors. Furthermore,
the ντ cross-section is important to understand the systematic errors of research on neutrino
oscillations and cosmic ντ .
A main origin of the systematic error in the ντ cross-section is uncertainty of the ντ beam
flux. The uncertainty is due to lack of information on the production cross-section of Ds meson
decaying to ντ . Therefore, we have been promoting the NA65/ DsTau experiment at CERN SPS
for the precise measurements of the Ds production cross-section. The NA65/DsTau experiment
was approved by CERN SPSC in 2019. The Ds mesons are produced by the proton-nucleus
interaction and the differential production cross-section is measured with Ds mesons detected at
400 GeV/c proton beam. This production cross-section obtained by 1000 Ds mesons can make
the ντ beam flux reduced from > 50% to 10%. This result will be an important input for future
experiments on ντ interaction, such as SHiP [3] and indirectly FASER [4] experiments.
As a byproduct, the intrinsic charm component will be studied. The hypothesis of presence
of the intrinsic charm component in nucleons is poorly studied experimentally. The ντ flux can
be affected by the intrinsic charm component emitted forward by a factor of ten due to the
enhancement of the charm meson production.

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ICPPA 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1690 (2020) 012174 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1690/1/012174

2. The Experiment
The main detector in the NA65/DsTau experiment is nuclear emulsion and the target material
is tungsten. Protons at 400 GeV/c interact with mainly the tungsten nucleus. Ds meson from a
proton-nucleus interaction can be identified, when a double-kink topology where Ds candidate
decay to tau lepton and the tau lepton decay to other particles, and the partner charm meson
(D± /D0 ) are detected. The kink angle of the Ds to τ decay is very small, with the average
angle of 7 mrad, so it is essential to analyze the emulsion with high angular resolution, which is
close to a technical limit of the emulsion and the dedicated microscope.
Figure 1 shows the structure (one unit) of the emulsion detector which consists of 10 emulsion
films stacked and a tungsten plate on the 10 films. The ten units stacked are one chamber, which
has 0.1 interaction length. A set of emulsions and lead layers is installed downstream of the
chamber to measure momentum of the long lived particles via multiple Coulomb scattering. The
emulsion chamber is moved by the target mover at a speed proportional to the beam intensity
to be irradiated uniformly with the proton beam with a diameter of about 10 mm. The number
of protons on target (POT) is planned to be 4.6×109 and the number of proton interaction will
reach 2.3×108 .

1 unit (5.5 mm)

Proton ντ X
Ds τ
beam
ντ
D+
X'
Plastic sheet (200 μm)
Emulsion film (320 μm)
Tungsten plate (0.5 mm)

Figure 1. Tau neutrino production process (Ds → τ → X) and the detector structure of the
NA65/DsTau experiment. The emulsion film has two emulsion layers of 60 µm on both sides of
the plastic base of 200 µm.

3. Analysis
All the charged particles recorded in the emulsion are read out using an automated microscope,
HTS [5]. The HTS was developed for various emulsion experiments. The readout speed is about
100 times faster than that of the OPERA experiment and the throughput in readout microscope
photo is 13 GB/s. About 10 PB photo data was readout for the NA65/DsTau pilot run in 2018.
Tracks are detected by GPUs from the photos and the data size of the tracks was compressed
with the ratios of around 0.1% of the original photo size. The track data size was ∼10TB for
the pilot run, which is equivalent to ∼1011 tracks.
All the emulsion films were completed to readout, except for problematic films caused by
the emulsion handling. Figure 2 shows the detection efficiency which is more than 95% for the
downstream part of the module where the track density is high due to secondary interactions.
The spatial resolution of 0.4 µm was achieved for tracks perpendicular to the emulsions. The
number of tracks for each plate was found to be in good agreement with that for MC based on
FLUKA [6, 7] as shown in figure 3.
Since the tracks in emulsion are not time-stamped, the interactions are reconstructed using
only the track position and angle.

2
ICPPA 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1690 (2020) 012174 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1690/1/012174

Figure 2. Base track detection efficiency averaged every 5 plates with angle of tan θ < 0.1.
Plate no.1 is the most upstream.

3
500 ×10
Track density / cm2

450 Fluka, Npl≥11, P≥0.3 GeV/c

400
data, N ≥11
pl
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
20 40 60 80 100
Emulsion plate number

Figure 3. The evolution of track density as a function of depth in a module, compared with
the FLUKA simulation [8].

All nearby tracks were combined and the interaction points emitting multiple tracks were
found. The number of interactions in tungsten was the largest and that in plastics was the
second largest; this tendency is consistent with MC. The number of charged particles emitted
from interactions in tungsten at small angle (below 20 mrad) and found in emulsion is less
than predicted by FLUKA simulation. We are then investigating the readout efficiency, track
reconstruction, and the MC model in detail.
We have searched for the double charm event in the 3.4×107 protons. The number of proton
interactions is 2.7×105 in all materials and 1.5×105 in tungsten. In a sub-sample of these
interactions, 159 events in total and 115 events in tungsten were detected as having a charm
pair topology. Since only 2% of the pilot run data have been analyzed, 50 times more events
from the pilot run will be obtained. In order to search for small angle kinks of the Ds to τ decay,
a precise measurement of track angles will be done with a special microscope.

4. Issues of physics run

The 2021-2022 physics runs use 10 times the amount of emulsion used in the pilot run. The data
size of microscope photo is expected to be ∼100 PB, and the data size of tracks is expected to be
100 TB. To handle the amount of data, a new readout system, HTS-2 is being developed. It will
have a low-magnification objective lens which will reduce the data size by half. By increasing

3
ICPPA 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1690 (2020) 012174 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1690/1/012174

throughput by 2.5 times, the readout speed is expected to be five times faster than HTS.
Although it may sound like a no-barrier, it is difficult to process 48 GB/s (390 Gbps) of photo
data in real time. This data processing will be accomplished by fully utilizing technologies such
as parallel processing, high-speed network communication for exchanging data between PCs,
and GPGPU for high-speed image processing. The pilot run took one year to read out with
HTS, so the physics run will take two years if the new readout system can be used.
The track reconstruction is also difficult because the process needs large amount of working
memory ∼100 GB. Four computers with ≥128 GB RAM are used for pilot run data analysis,
however, preparing forty computers for physics run is not realistic to handle 10 times the amount
of track data. The software will be improved to increase the processing speed. If it is still not
enough, many computers will be installed in many institutes and share the workload for the
data analysis.
The target mover for physics runs with wider aperture is almost ready, which is used in the
E07 experiment at J-PARC. The drive tests are undergoing. The films were made by hand for
pilot run, but it would take too long time for physics run in the same way. To reduce the time,
new equipment for mass-production of emulsions was installed and an automatic application
system is being constructed.

5. Conclusion and prospects

The NA65/DsTau experiment is a study conducted at the CERN SPS beamline to elucidate the
differential production cross-sections of Ds mesons and the nature of intrinsic charm production.
In the 2018 pilot run analysis, 100% of the films were readout and 159 candidates of charm pairs
were found from 2% of the films, so far. The physics results of the pilot run will be available
soon.
Despite the effects of COVID-19, physics runs are scheduled in 2021 and 2022 at CERN SPS.
Emulsion readout system, data analysis, the target mover, and production of emulsion films are
being prepared for the physics run.

Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the beam physicists at CERN for successful data taking in the proton beam at
the SPS north area. We would like to thank the technical staff from LHEP Bern. We thank N.
Naganawa and the colleagues from Nagoya University for the instruction in emulsion detector.
We would like to thank students from Middle East Technical University and Nagoya University
for the beam exposure campaign.
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18KK0085, JP17H06926,
Konica Minolta Science and Technology Foundation Research Grant for Photographic Science,
and project No. 16 (Study of the tau neutrino production in proton-nucleus interactions)
between JINR, Dubna, Russia and ISS, Romania. This work was partially supported by the
Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant PZ00P2 154833, especially on the detector
R&D. We also thank the support from the TAEK of Turkey.

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[4] Abreu H et al. (FASER Collaboration), 2020 Eur. Phys. J. C 80 1, 61
[5] Yoshimoto M, Nakano T, Komatani R and Kawahara H, 2017 Prog. Theor. Exp. Phys. 2017 10, 103H01
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