The cross section of neutrino-induced neutral-current coherent pi(0) production on a carbon-dominated target is measured in the NOvA near detector. This measurement uses a narrow-band neutrino beam with an average neutrino energy of 2.7 GeV, which is of interest to ongoing and future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments.
The measured, flux-averaged cross section is sigma = 13.8 +/- 0.9(stat) +/- 2.3(syst) x 10(-40) cm(2)/nucleus, consistent with model prediction. This result is the most precise measurement of neutral-current coherent pi(0) production in the few-GeV neutrino energy region.