Speakers
Description
The MANTRA (Measuring Anti-Neutron: Tagging and Reconstruction Algorithm for frontier experiments) is a PRIN 2022 Italian project which proposes a new method to measure the energy of anti-neutrons produced in high-energy physics experiments. Anti-neutrons cannot be reconstructed by the tracking systems; however, they can produce so-called annihilation stars in electromagnetic calorimeters, which can form self-contained hadronic showers consisting mainly of pions and other hadrons. The signature from anti-neutron annihilations can be distinguished from the signatures of photons and other neutral particles due to the characteristic shape of the shower. However, only a part of the energy is deposited in the calorimeters, leading to a momentum uncertainty of approximately 50%.
To overcome this limitation, we propose combining calorimetric information with precise timing measurements from fast detectors placed upstream of the calorimeter. These timing detectors can detect either the annihilation of the anti-neutron or the calorimetric shower back-splash in order to extract the momentum with a high precision.
We will show the proof-of-concept results, obtained by applying this method to the Belle II experiment. We will demonstrate the improved anti-neutron identification and momentum resolution by combining information from the time-of-propagation Cherenkov detector and the electromagnetic calorimeter.