The Decay of Tau Leptons Produced in Neutrino-Nucleon Scatterings

Abstract

Energy and angular distributions of the tau decay products in the CERN-to-Gran Sasso $ν_τ$ appearance experiments are studied for the decay modes $τ\toπν$ and $τ\to l\barνν$ (l=e or mu). We find that the decay particle distributions in the laboratory frame are significantly affected by the tau polarization. Rather strong azimuthal asymmetry of $pi^-$ and $l^-$ about the tau momentum axis is predicted, which may have observable consequences even at small statistics experiments.

14 pages, 6 eps figures; comments on Fig. 1 added, Fig. 4 improved to see clearly