Charged pion production via charged current \(\nu_{\mu}\) interactions on plastic (CH) is studied using the MINERvA detector exposed to the NuMI wideband neutrino beam at Fermilab. Events with ...hadronic invariant mass W \(<\) 1.4 GeV are selected to isolate single pion production, which is expected to occur primarily through the \(\Delta(1232)\) resonance. Cross sections as functions of pion production angle and kinetic energy are reported and compared to predictions from different theoretical calculations and generator-based models, for neutrinos ranging in energy from 1.5 GeV to 10 GeV. The data are best described by calculations which include significant contributions from pion intranuclear rescattering. These measurements constrain the primary interaction rate and the role of final state interactions in pion production, both of which need to be well understood by neutrino oscillation experiments.
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.
We present measurements of \(\nu_{\mu}\) charged-current cross section ratios on carbon, iron, and lead relative to a scintillator (CH) using the fine-grained MINERvA detector exposed to the NuMI ...neutrino beam at Fermilab. The measurements utilize events of energies \(2<E_{\nu}<20~GeV\), with \(\left< E_{\nu}\right>=8~GeV\), which have a reconstructed \(\mu^{-}\) scattering angle less than \(17^\circ\) to extract ratios of inclusive total cross sections as a function of neutrino energy \(E_{\nu}\) and flux-integrated differential cross sections with respect to the Bjorken scaling variable \(x\). These results provide the first high-statistics direct measurements of nuclear effects in neutrino scattering using different targets in the same neutrino beam. Measured cross section ratios exhibit a relative depletion at low \(x\) and enhancement at large \(x\). Both become more pronounced as the nucleon number of the target nucleus increases. The data are not reproduced by GENIE, a conventional neutrino-nucleus scattering simulation, or by the alternative models for the nuclear dependence of inelastic scattering that are considered.
Neutrino-induced coherent charged pion production on nuclei, \(\stackrel{(-)}{\nu}_\mu A\to\mu^\pm\pi^\mp A\) is a rare, inelastic interaction in which a small squared four-momentum \(| t|\) is ...transferred to the recoil nucleus leaving it intact in the reaction. In the scintillator tracker of MINERvA, we remove events with evidence of particles from nuclear breakup and reconstruct \(| t|\) from the final state pion and muon. We select low \(| t|\) events to isolate a sample rich in coherent candidates. By selecting low \(| t|\) events we produce a model-independent measurement of the differential cross section for coherent scattering of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos on carbon. We find poor agreement with the predicted kinematics in neutrino generators used by current oscillation experiments.
