Improved measurement of neutral current coherent π⁰ production on carbon in a few-GeV neutrino beam

The SciBooNE Collaboration reports a measurement of neutral current coherent π⁰ production on carbon by a muon neutrino beam with average energy 0.8 GeV. The separation of coherent from inclusive π⁰ production has been improved by detecting recoil protons from resonant π⁰ production. We measure the ratio of the neutral current coherent π⁰ production to total charged current cross sections to be (1.16 ± 0.24) x 10⁻². The ratio of charged current coherent π⁺ to neutral current coherent π⁰ production is calculated to be 0.14+0.30−0.28, using our published charged current coherent pion measurement.