Search for ν_e -¹⁶O Interactions From Low Energy Atmospheric Neutrinos in Super-Kamiokande

Charged-current scattering of ν_e below 100 MeV from ¹⁶O nucleus is not yet measured. This interaction is a ν_e detection channel for water Cherenkov detectors in case of a supernova burst. Furthermore, in Super-Kamiokande diffuse supernova neutrino background (DSNB) is being searched with the inverse beta decay process and ν_e interactions from atmospheric neutrinos are a background to this search. Finally, atmospheric neutrinos at this energy range will be a background for the future WIMP dark matter searches via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering and ν_e -¹⁶O interactions are a way to probe the atmospheric ν_e flux at low energies to better estimate this background. A study for the first observation of this interaction from atmospheric ν_e with 20 years of Super-Kamiokande data is currently underway, with the goal of measuring atmospheric ν_e flux weighted cross section below 100 MeV. For this purpose, a custom event generator that can accurately simulate products of ν_e -¹⁶O and background interactions has been built. Based on the output of this event generator and detector simulations, visible energy distributions and probability of gamma and neutron emissions in Super-Kamiokande for ν_e -¹⁶O and background interactions are obtained. Currently statistical methods to use this information to extract number of ν_e -¹⁶O events in the Super-Kamiokande data are being studied. In this talk, both the event generator and the current status of the analysis will be discussed.