Measurement of Coherent Production of $\ddot{I}{€}^{\pm }$ in Neutrino and Anti-Neutrino Beams on Carbon from $E_{\hat{I}}½$ of $1.5$ to $20$ GeV

Abstract

Neutrino-induced coherent charged pion production on nuclei, $\stackrel{(-)}{\hat{I}}{½}_{\hat{I}}¼A\to \hat{I}{¼}^{\pm }\ddot{I}{€}^{\mp }A$ 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.

13 pages, 4 figures. v3->v4 corrections to several inline formulas and fixes to citations. v2->v3 revision includes minor corrections to text and tables, the final ArgoNeuT result in Figure 3, and ancillary files with the tables in CSV format. v1->v2 revision added comparisons to NEUT generator and updated estimate of the diffractive-like process on protons