No Arabic abstract
This paper reports measurements of final-state proton multiplicity, muon and proton kinematics, and their correlations in charged-current pionless neutrino interactions, measured by the T2K ND280 near detector in its plastic scintillator (C$_8$H$_8$) target. The data were taken between years 2010 and 2013, corresponding to approximately 6$times10^{20}$ protons on target. Thanks to their exploration of the proton kinematics and of kinematic imbalances between the proton and muon kinematics, the results offer a novel probe of the nuclear-medium effects most pertinent to the (sub-)GeV neutrino-nucleus interactions that are used in accelerator-based long-baseline neutrino oscillation measurements. These results are compared to many neutrino-nucleus interaction models which all fail to describe at least part of the observed phase space. In case of events without a proton above a detection threshold in the final state, a fully consistent implementation of the local Fermi gas model with multinucleon interactions gives the best description of the data. In the case of at least one proton in the final state the spectral function model agrees well with the data, most notably when measuring the kinematic imbalance between the muon and the proton in the plane transverse to the incoming neutrino. A clear indication of existence of multinucleon interactions is observed. The effect of final-state interactions is also discussed.
This paper reports the first simultaneous measurement of the double differential muon neutrino charged-current cross section on oxygen and carbon without pions in the final state as a function of the outgoing muon kinematics, made at the ND280 off-axis near detector of the T2K experiment. The ratio of the oxygen and carbon cross sections is also provided to help validate various models ability to extrapolate between carbon and oxygen nuclear targets, as is required in T2K oscillation analyses. The data are taken using a neutrino beam with an energy spectrum peaked at 0.6 GeV. The extracted measurement is compared with the prediction from different Monte Carlo neutrino-nucleus interaction event generators, showing particular model separation for very forward-going muons. Overall, of the models tested, the result is best described using Local Fermi Gas descriptions of the nuclear ground state with RPA suppression.
This paper presents the first combined measurement of the double-differential muon neutrino and antineutrino charged-current cross sections with no pions in the final state on hydrocarbon at the off-axis near detector of the T2K experiment. The data analyzed in this work comprise 5.8$times$10$^{20}$ and 6.3$times$10$^{20}$ protons on target in neutrino and antineutrino mode respectively, at a beam energy peak of 0.6 GeV. Using the two measured cross sections, the sum, difference and asymmetry were calculated with the aim of better understanding the nuclear effects involved in such interactions. The extracted measurements have been compared with the prediction from different Monte Carlo generators and theoretical models showing that the difference between the two cross sections have interesting sensitivity to nuclear effects.
Final-state kinematic imbalances are measured in mesonless production of $ u_mu + A to mu^- + p + X$ in the MINERvA tracker. Initial- and final-state nuclear effects are probed using the direction of the $mu^-$-p transverse momentum imbalance and the initial-state momentum of the struck neutron. Differential cross sections are compared to predictions based on current approaches to medium modeling. These models under-predict the cross section at intermediate intranuclear momentum transfers that generally exceed the Fermi momenta. As neutrino interaction models need to correctly incorporate the effect of the nucleus in order to predict neutrino energy resolution in oscillation experiments, this result points to a region of phase space where additional cross section strength is needed in current models, and demonstrates a new technique that would be suitable for use in fine grained liquid argon detectors where the effect of the nucleus may be even larger.
We report the measurement of muon neutrino charged-current interactions on carbon without pions in the final state at the T2K beam energy using 5.734$times10^{20}$ protons on target. For the first time the measurement is reported as a flux-integrated, double-differential cross-section in muon kinematic variables ($costheta_mu$, $p_mu$), without correcting for events where a pion is produced and then absorbed by final state interactions. Two analyses are performed with different selections, background evaluations and cross-section extraction methods to demonstrate the robustness of the results against biases due to model-dependent assumptions. The measurements compare favorably with recent models which include nucleon-nucleon correlations but, given the present precision, the measurement does not solve the degeneracy between different models. The data also agree with Monte Carlo simulations which use effective parameters that are tuned to external data to describe the nuclear effects. The total cross-section in the full phase space is $sigma = (0.417 pm 0.047 text{(syst)} pm 0.005 text{(stat)})times 10^{-38} text{cm}^2$ $text{nucleon}^{-1}$ and the cross-section integrated in the region of phase space with largest efficiency and best signal-over-background ratio ($costheta_mu>0.6$ and $p_mu > 200$ MeV) is $sigma = (0.202 pm 0.0359 text{(syst)} pm 0.0026 text{(stat)}) times 10^{-38} text{cm}^2$ $text{nucleon}^{-1}$.
We report the first measurement of monoenergetic muon neutrino charged current interactions. MiniBooNE has isolated 236 MeV muon neutrino events originating from charged kaon decay at rest ($K^+ rightarrow mu^+ u_mu$) at the NuMI beamline absorber. These signal $ u_mu$-carbon events are distinguished from primarily pion decay in flight $ u_mu$ and $overline{ u}_mu$ backgrounds produced at the target station and decay pipe using their arrival time and reconstructed muon energy. The significance of the signal observation is at the 3.9$sigma$ level. The muon kinetic energy, neutrino-nucleus energy transfer ($omega=E_ u-E_mu$), and total cross section for these events is extracted. This result is the first known-energy, weak-interaction-only probe of the nucleus to yield a measurement of $omega$ using neutrinos, a quantity thus far only accessible through electron scattering.