Neutrino counting with the SLD at the Stanford Linear Collider

This paper examines the relative merits of several methods for determining the number of neutrino generations with the SLD at the Stanford Linear Collider. The authors conclude that in the limit of large statistics, the most precise technique is a measurement taken at a collision energy of 96 GeV of the ratio of the cross sections for the processes e+e- → γ to e+e- → - vγ, for which errors smaller than 0.10 Nv should be achievable. Alternatively, if 106 Z0 events are collected at the Z0 resonance peak, this measurement will provide a precision of about 0.15 Nv. The authors give a summary of the relative performance of the experimental methods examined in this paper as a function of the size of the available data sample