Measurement of Ratios of ${\nu }_{\mu }$ Charged-Current Cross Sections on C, Fe, and Pb to CH at Neutrino Energies 2-20 GeV

Abstract

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 $2<E_{\nu }<20GeV$, with $⟨E_{\nu }⟩=8GeV$, 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.

6 pages, 2 figures, 7 pages of supplemental material. Published in Physical Review Letters June 13, 2014

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