Characterizing Neutrino Interactions In Proposed Muon Collider Detectors

This work investigates beam-induced neutrino (BIN) events in proposed muon collider detectors. We compute event rates within the detector interaction region (IR) for 2 (mu+mu+), 3, and 10 (mu+mu-) TeV collider designs, and determine that BINs would provide the largest statistics of detectable neutrino-nucleus and neutrino-electron interactions as well as the highest-energy, most collimated, and best-characterized neutrino beam ever produced in a laboratory. We show the spatial and temporal distributions of these events in the IR and the resulting kinematic distributions of the neutrino-induced primary charged leptons. We compare it to the other beam-induced backgrounds in scenarios discussed in the literature. We discuss possible applications of BIN measurements, notably the precise measurement of inclusive and exclusive neutrino cross-sections in currently unprobed energy ranges and rare processes (e.g., final state tridents), and placing constraints on Beyond Standard Model theories like sterile oscillation and flavor-violating decay theories.