The first direct measurement of electron neutrino quasielastic and quasielasticlike scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident neutrino energy has been carried out using the MINERvA ...detector in the NuMI beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in the electron production angle, electron energy, and Q^{2} are presented. The ratio of the quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in Q^{2} for ν_{e} with that of similarly selected ν_{μ}-induced events from the same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional treatments of charged-current ν_{e} interactions used by long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with lepton universality and are well described by the predictions of the neutrino event generator GENIE.
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A study of charged-current muon neutrino scattering on hydrocarbon in which the final state includes a muon, at least one proton, and no pions is presented. Although this signature has the topology ...of neutrino quasielastic scattering from neutrons, the event sample contains contributions from quasielastic and inelastic processes where pions are absorbed in the nucleus. The analysis accepts events with muon production angles up to 70° and proton kinetic energies greater than 110 MeV. The cross section, when based completely on hadronic kinematics, is well described by a relativistic Fermi gas nuclear model including the neutrino event generator modeling for inelastic processes and particle transportation through the nucleus. This is in contrast to the quasielastic cross section based on muon kinematics, which is best described by an extended model that incorporates multinucleon correlations. As a result, this measurement guides the formulation of a complete description of neutrino-nucleus interactions that encompasses the hadronic as well as the leptonic aspects of this process.
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The construction of the Agua Negra tunnels that will link Argentina and Chile under the Andes, the world's longest mountain range, opens the possibility of building the first deep underground ...laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere. This laboratory has the acronym ANDES (Agua Negra Deep Experiment Site) and its overburden could be as large as ~ 1.7 km of rock, or 4500 mwe, providing an excellent low background environment to study physics of rare events like the ones induced by neutrinos and/or dark matter. In this paper we investigate the physics potential of a few kiloton size liquid scintillator detector, which could be constructed in the ANDES laboratory as one of its possible scientific programs. In particular, we evaluate the impact of such a detector for the studies of geoneutrinos and Galactic supernova neutrinos, assuming a fiducial volume of 3 kilotons as a reference size. We emphasize the complementary roles of such a detector to the ones of the Northern Hemisphere neutrino facilities, given the advantages of its geographical location.
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Two different nuclear-medium effects are isolated using a low three-momentum transfer subsample of neutrino-carbon scattering data from the MINERvA neutrino experiment. The observed hadronic energy ...in charged-current \(\nu_\mu\) interactions is combined with muon kinematics to permit separation of the quasielastic and \(\Delta\)(1232) resonance processes. First, we observe a small cross section at very low energy transfer that matches the expected screening effect of long-range nucleon correlations. Second, additions to the event rate in the kinematic region between the quasielastic and \(\Delta\) resonance processes are needed to describe the data. The data in this kinematic region also has an enhanced population of multi-proton final states. Contributions predicted for scattering from a nucleon pair have both properties; the model tested in this analysis is a significant improvement but does not fully describe the data. We present the results as a double-differential cross section to enable further investigation of nuclear models. Improved description of the effects of the nuclear environment are required by current and future neutrino oscillation experiments.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 081802 (2016) The first direct measurement of electron-neutrino quasielastic and
quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident
neutrino energy ...has been carried out using the MINERvA detector in the NuMI
beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in electron
production angle, electron energy and $Q^{2}$ are presented. The ratio of the
quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in $Q^{2}$ for
$\nu_{e}$ with that of similarly-selected $\nu_{\mu}$-induced events from the
same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional
treatments of charged-current $\nu_{e}$ interactions used by long-baseline
neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with
lepton universality and are well-described by the predictions of the neutrino
event generator GENIE.
The MINERvA collaboration operated a scaled-down replica of the solid scintillator tracking and sampling calorimeter regions of the MINERvA detector in a hadron test beam at the Fermilab Test Beam ...Facility. This article reports measurements with samples of protons, pions, and electrons from 0.35 to 2.0 GeV/c momentum. The calorimetric response to protons, pions, and electrons are obtained from these data. A measurement of the parameter in Birks' law and an estimate of the tracking efficiency are extracted from the proton sample. Overall the data are well described by a Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulation of the detector and particle interactions with agreements better than 4%, though some features of the data are not precisely modeled. These measurements are used to tune the MINERvA detector simulation and evaluate systematic uncertainties in support of the MINERvA neutrino cross section measurement program.
Phys. Rev. D 91, 071301 (2015) A study of charged-current muon neutrino scattering on hydrocarbon in which
the final state includes a muon and a proton and no pions is presented.
Although this ...signature has the topology of neutrino quasielastic scattering
from neutrons, the event sample contains contributions from both quasielastic
and inelastic processes where pions are absorbed in the nucleus. The analysis
accepts events with muon production angles up to 70$^{\circ}$ and proton
kinetic energies greater than 110 MeV. The extracted cross section, when based
completely on hadronic kinematics, is well-described by a simple relativistic
Fermi gas nuclear model including the neutrino event generator modeling for
inelastic processes and particle transportation through the nucleus. This is in
contrast to the quasielastic cross section based on muon kinematics, which is
best described by an extended model that incorporates multi-nucleon
correlations. This measurement guides the formulation of a complete description
of neutrino-nucleus interactions that encompasses the hadronic as well as the
leptonic aspects of this process.
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