2015/10/28 by J. Wolcott, Wolcott, Jeremy
Physics and Astronomy · #Neutrino Physics Research #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.08342
The electron-neutrino charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) cross section on nuclei is an important input parameter to appearance-type neutrino oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically work from the muon neutrino cross section and apply corrections from theoretical arguments to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross section, but to date there has been no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments. We present the first measurement of an exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions, namely, the cross section for a CCQE-like process, made using the MINERvA detector. The result is given as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and square of the four-momentum transferred to the nucleus, Q2. We also compute the ratio to a muon neutrino cross-section in Q2 from MINERvA. We find satisfactory agreement between this measurement and the predictions of the GENIE generator.