Identification of nuclear effects in neutrino-carbon interactions at low three-momentum transfer
Abstract
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 interactions is combined with muon kinematics to permit separation of the quasielastic and (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 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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1511.05944,
title = {Identification of nuclear effects in neutrino-carbon interactions at low three-momentum transfer},
author = {P. A. Rodrigues and J. Demgen and E. Miltenberger and L. Aliaga and O. Altinok and L. Bellantoni and A. Bercellie and M. Betancourt and A. Bodek and A. Bravar and H. Budd and T. Kai and M. F. Carneiro and J. Chvojka and J. Devan and S. A. Dytman and G. A. Diaz and B. Eberly and M. Elkins and J. Felix and L. Fields and R. Fine and A. M. Gago and R. Galindo and H. Gallagher and A. Ghosh and T. Golan and R. Gran and D. A. Harris and A. Higuera and K. Hurtado and M. Kiveni and J. Kleykamp and M. Kordosky and T. Le and J. R. Leistico and A. Lovlein and E. Maher and S. Manly and W. A. Mann and C. M. Marshall and D. A. Martinez Caicedo and K. S. McFarland and C. L. McGivern and A. M. McGowan and B. Messerly and J. Miller and A. Mislivec and J. Morfin and J. Mousseau and T. Muhlbeier and D. Naples and J. K. Nelson and A. Norrick and Nuruzzaman and J. Osta and V. Paolone and C. E. Patrick and G. N. Perdue and M. A. Ramirez and R. D. Ransome and H. Ray and L. Ren and D. Rimal and D. Ruterbories and H. Schellman and D. W. Schmitz and C. J. Solano Salinas and N. Tagg and B. G. Tice and E. Valencia and T. Walton and J. Wolcott and M. Wospakrik and G. Zavala and D. Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.05944},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
7 pages, 3 figures, supplemental material. v2 includes updates from the review process. v3 includes ancillary files. v4 fixes incorrect exponent in Fig. 2 and supplemental files, synchronized with the erratum in the journal version