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 ν_{μ} interactions is combined with muon kinematics to permit separation of the quasielastic and Δ(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 Δ resonance processes are needed to describe the data. The data in this kinematic region also have an enhanced population of multiproton 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.
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Knowledge of the neutrino flux produced by the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) beamline is essential to the neutrino oscillation and neutrino interaction measurements of the MINERvA, MINOS+, ...NOvA and MicroBooNE experiments at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. We have produced a flux prediction which uses all available and relevant hadron production data, incorporating measurements of particle production off of thin targets as well as measurements of particle yields from a spare NuMI target exposed to a 120 GeV proton beam. The result is the most precise flux prediction achieved for a neutrino beam in the one to tens of GeV energy region. We have also compared the prediction to in situ measurements of the neutrino flux and find good agreement.
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Final-state kinematic imbalances are measured in mesonless production of νμ+A→μ-+p+X in the MINERvA tracker. Initial- and final-state nuclear effects are probed using the direction of the μ- - 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 underpredict 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.
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We present double-differential measurements of antineutrino charged-current quasielastic scattering in the MINERvA detector. This study improves on a previous single-differential measurement by using ...updated reconstruction algorithms and interaction models and provides a complete description of observed muon kinematics in the form of a double-differential cross section with respect to muon transverse and longitudinal momentum. We include in our signal definition zero-meson final states arising from multinucleon interactions and from resonant pion production followed by pion absorption in the primary nucleus. We find that model agreement is considerably improved by a model tuned to MINERvA inclusive neutrino scattering data that incorporates nuclear effects such as weak nuclear screening and two-particle, two-hole enhancements.
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Faced with unresolved tensions between neutrino interaction measurements at few-GeV neutrino energies, current experiments are forced to accept large systematic uncertainties to cover discrepancies ...between their data and model predictions. The widely used pion production model in GENIE is compared to four MINERνA charged current pion production measurements using nuisance. Tunings, i.e., adjustments of model parameters, to help match GENIE to MINERνA and older bubble chamber data are presented. We find that scattering off nuclear targets as measured in MINERνA is not in good agreement with expectations based upon scattering off nucleon (hydrogen or deuterium) targets in existing bubble chamber data. An additional ad hoc correction for the low−Q2 region, where collective nuclear effects are expected to be large, is presented. While these tunings and corrections improve the agreement of GENIE with the data, the modeling is imperfect. The development of these tunings within the nuisance framework allows for straightforward extensions to other neutrino event generators and models, and allows omitting and including new datasets as they become available.
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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.
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