Neutron production in antineutrino interactions can lead to bias in energy reconstruction in neutrino oscillation experiments, but these interactions have rarely been studied. MINERvA previously ...studied neutron production at an average antineutrino energy of ~3 GeV in 2016 and found deficiencies in leading models. In this paper, the MINERvA 6 GeV average antineutrino energy dataset is shown to have similar disagreements. A measurement of the cross section for an antineutrino to produce two or more neutrons and have low visible energy is presented as an experiment-independent way to explore neutron production modeling. This cross section disagrees with several leading models’ predictions. Neutron modeling techniques from nuclear physics are used to quantify neutron detection uncertainties on this result.
Elastic neutrino scattering on electrons is a precisely known purely leptonic process that provides a standard candle for measuring neutrino flux in conventional neutrino beams. Using a total sample ...of 810 neutrino-electron scatters after background subtraction, the measurement reduces the normalization uncertainty on the ν μ NuMI beam flux between 2 and 20 GeV from 7.6 to 3.9%. This is the most precise measurement of neutrino-electron scattering to date, will reduce uncertainties on MINER ν A's absolute cross section measurements, and demonstrates a technique that can be used in future neutrino beams such as long baseline neutrino facility.
We measure neutrino charged-current quasielasticlike scattering on hydrocarbon at high statistics using the wideband Neutrinos at the Main Injector beam with neutrino energy peaked at 6 GeV. The ...double-differential cross section is reported in terms of muon longitudinal (p_{∥}) and transverse (p_{⊥}) momentum. Cross section contours versus lepton momentum components are approximately described by a conventional generator-based simulation, however, discrepancies are observed for transverse momenta above 0.5 GeV/c for longitudinal momentum ranges 3-5 and 9-20 GeV/c. The single differential cross section versus momentum transfer squared (dσ/dQ_{QE}^{2}) is measured over a four-decade range of Q^{2} that extends to 10 GeV^{2}. The cross section turnover and falloff in the Q^{2} range 0.3-10 GeV^{2} is not fully reproduced by generator predictions that rely on dipole form factors. Our measurement probes the axial-vector content of the hadronic current and complements the electromagnetic form factor data obtained using electron-nucleon elastic scattering. These results help oscillation experiments because they probe the importance of various correlations and final-state interaction effects within the nucleus, which have different effects on the visible energy in detectors.
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.
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.
Accelerator based neutrino oscillation experiments seek to measure the relative number of electron and muon (anti)neutrinos at different L / E values. However high statistics studies of neutrino ...interactions are almost exclusively measured using muon (anti)neutrinos since the dominant flavor of neutrinos produced by accelerator based beams are of the muon type. This work reports new measurements of electron (anti)neutrinos interactions in hydrocarbon, obtained by strongly suppressing backgrounds initiated by muon flavor (anti)neutrinos. Double differential cross sections as a function of visible energy transfer, E avail , and transverse momentum transfer, p T , or three momentum transfer, q 3 are presented. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We present measurements of the cross section for anti-neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon using the medium energy NuMI wide-band neutrino beam peaking at antineutrino ...energy $\langle E_\bar{v} \rangle$ 6 GeV. The measurements are presented as a function of the longitudinal momentum ($p_{||}$) and transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) of the final state muon. This work complements our previously reported high statistics measurement in the neutrino channel and extends the previous anti-neutrino measurement made in the low energy beam at $\langle E_\bar{v} \rangle$ ~ 3.5 GeV out to $p_{T}$ of 2.5 GeV/c. Current theoretical models do not completely describe the data in this previously unexplored high $p_{T}$ region. The single differential cross section as a function of four momentum transfer ($Q^{2}_{QE}$) now extends to 4 GeV2 with high statistics. The cross section as a function of $Q^{2}_{QE}$ shows that the tuned simulations developed by the MINERvA collaboration that agreed well with the low energy beam measurements do not agree as well with the medium energy beam measurements. Newer neutrino interaction models such as the GENIE 3 tunes are better able to simulate the high $Q^{2}_{QE}$.
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