Probing nuclear effects with neutrino-induced charged-current neutral pion production

Coplowe D.; Altinok O.; Ahmad Dar Z.; Akbar F.; Andrade D.A.; Barr G.D.; Bashyal A.; Bercellie A.; Betancourt M.; Bodek A.; Bravar A.; Budd H.; Caceres G.; Cai T.; Carneiro M.F.; Da Motta H.; Dytman S.A.; Díaz G.A.; Felix J.; Fields L.; Filkins A.; Fine R.; Gago A.M.; Gallagher H.; Ghosh A.; Gran R.; Harris D.A.; Henry S.; Jena S.; Kleykamp J.; Kordosky M.; Last D.; Le T.; Lozano A.; Lu X.-G.; Maher E.; Manly S.; Mann W.A.; Mauger C.; McFarland K.S.; Messerly B.; Miller J.; Morfín J.G.; Naples D.; Nelson J.K.; Nguyen C.; Norrick A.; Olivier A.; Paolone V.; Perdue G.N.; Ramírez M.A.; Ransome R.D.; Ray H.; Rodrigues P.A.; Ruterbories D.; Schellman H.; Sobczyk J.T.; Solano Salinas C.J.; Su H.; Sultana M.; Syrotenko V.S.; Valencia E.; Wark D.; Weber A.; Wospakrik M.; Wret C.; Yaeggy B.; Zazueta L. · Physical Review D (2020) · DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.102.072007

Resumen

We study neutrino-induced charged-current (CC) π0 production on carbon nuclei using events with fully imaged final-state proton-π0 systems. Novel use of final-state correlations based on transverse kinematic imbalance enables the first measurements of the struck nucleon's Fermi motion, of the intranuclear momentum transfer (IMT) dynamics, and of the final-state hadronic momentum configuration in neutrino pion production. Event distributions are presented for (i) the momenta of neutrino-struck neutrons below the Fermi surface, (ii) the direction of missing transverse momentum characterizing the strength of IMT, and (iii) proton-pion momentum imbalance with respect to the lepton scattering plane. The observed Fermi motion and IMT strength are compared to the previous MINERνA measurement of neutrino CC quasielastic-like production. The measured shapes and absolute rates of these distributions, as well as the cross section asymmetries, show tensions with predictions from current neutrino generator models.

Instituciones: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería