Simultaneous Measurement of Proton and Lepton Kinematics in Quasielasticlike νμ -Hydrocarbon Interactions from 2 to 20 GeV

Ruterbories D.; Akhter S.; Ahmad Dar Z.; Akbar F.; Ansari V.; Ascencio M.V.; Sajjad Athar M.; Bashyal A.; Bercellie A.; Betancourt M.; Bodek A.; Bonilla J.L.; Bravar A.; Budd H.; Caceres G.; Cai T.; Carneiro M.F.; Díaz G.A.; Da Motta H.; Felix J.; Fields L.; Filkins A.; Fine R.; Gago A.M.; Gallagher H.; Gaur P.K.; Ghosh A.; Gilligan S.M.; Gran R.; Haase E.; Harris D.A.; Henry S.; Jacobsen K.; Jena D.; Jena S.; Kleykamp J.; Klustová A.; Kordosky M.; Last D.; Lozano A.; Lu X.-G.; Maher E.; Manly S.; Mann W.A.; Mauger C.; McFarland K.S.; McGowan A.M.; Messerly B.; Miller J.; Moreno O.; Morfín J.G.; Naples D.; Nelson J.K.; Nguyen C.; Olivier A.; Paolone V.; Perdue G.N.; Plows K.-J.; Ramírez M.A.; Ransome R.D.; Ray H.; Schellman H.; Solano Salinas C.J.; Su H.; Sultana M.; Syrotenko V.S.; Valencia E.; Vaughan N.H.; Waldron A.V.; Wascko M.O.; Wret C.; Yaeggy B.; Zazueta L. · Physical Review Letters (2022) · DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.129.021803

Resumen

Neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering, a reaction category extensively used in neutrino oscillation measurements, probes nuclear effects that govern neutrino-nucleus interactions. This Letter reports the first measurement of the triple-differential cross section for νμ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wideband beam spanning 2≤Eν≤20 GeV. The measurement maps the correlations among transverse and longitudinal muon momenta and summed proton kinetic energies, and compares them to predictions from a state-of-art simulation. Discrepancies are observed that likely reflect shortfalls with modeling of pion and nucleon intranuclear scattering and/or spectator nucleon ejection from struck nuclei. The separate determination of leptonic and hadronic variables can inform experimental approaches to neutrino-energy estimation.

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