Measurement of neutrino oscillation by the K2K experiment

Abstract

We present measurements of ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\ensuremath{\mu}}$ disappearance in K2K, the KEK to Kamioka long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. One-hundred and twelve beam-originated neutrino events are observed in the fiducial volume of Super-Kamiokande with an expectation of ${158.1}_{\ensuremath{-}8.6}^{+9.2}$ events without oscillation. A distortion of the energy spectrum is also seen in 58 single-ring muonlike events with reconstructed energies. The probability that the observations are explained by the expectation for no neutrino oscillation is 0.0015% ($4.3\ensuremath{\sigma}$). In a two-flavor oscillation scenario, the allowed $\ensuremath{\Delta}{m}^{2}$ region at ${sin}^{2}2\ensuremath{\theta}=1$ is between 1.9 and $3.5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{eV}}^{2}$ at the 90% C.L. with a best-fit value of $2.8\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{eV}}^{2}$.