Measurements of the Inclusive Neutrino and Antineutrino Charged Current Cross Sections in MINERvA Using the Low-$\nu$ Flux Method

Abstract

The total cross sections are important ingredients for the current and future neutrino oscillation experiments. We present measurements of the total charged-current neutrino and antineutrino cross sections on scintillator (CH) in the NuMI low-energy beamline using an {\em in situ} prediction of the shape of the flux as a function of neutrino energy from 2--50 GeV. This flux prediction takes advantage of the fact that neutrino and antineutrino interactions with low nuclear recoil energy ($\nu$) have a nearly constant cross section as a function of incident neutrino energy. This measurement is the lowest energy application of the low-$\nu$ flux technique, the first time it has been used in the NuMI antineutrino beam configuration, and demonstrates that the technique is applicable to future neutrino beams operating at multi-GeV energies. The cross section measurements presented are the most precise measurements to date below 5 GeV.

8 pages, 6 figures, and 12 supplemental tables of fluxes, cross sections, breakdowns of their uncertainties, and their covariance matrices

References in corpus (10)

• First Measurement of the Muon Neutrino Charged Current Quasielastic Double Differential Cross Section
• The T2K Neutrino Flux Prediction
• Vector and Axial Nucleon Form Factors:A Duality Constrained Parameterization
• Measurement of Neutrino-Induced Charged-Current Charged Pion Production Cross Sections on Mineral Oil at E${}_{\nu }\sim 1\text{GeV}$
• Inclusive production of charged pions in p+C collisions at 158 GeV/c beam momentum
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• Measurements of Inclusive Muon Neutrino and Antineutrino Charged Current Differential Cross Sections on Argon in the NuMI Antineutrino Beam
• Measurement of muon plus proton final states in ${\nu }_{\mu }$ Interactions on Hydrocarbon at $⟨$$E_{\nu }$$⟩$ = 4.2 GeV
• Measurement of the inclusive ${\nu }_{\mu }$ charged current cross section on iron and hydrocarbon in the T2K on-axis neutrino beam
• The MINER$\nu$A Data Acquisition System and Infrastructure

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Neutrino-electron elastic scattering for flux determination at the DUNE oscillation experiment
• Double-Differential Inclusive Charged-Current ${\nu }_{\mu }$ Cross Sections on Hydrocarbon in MINERvA at $⟨E_{\nu }⟩\sim$ 3.5 GeV
• General heavy-flavor mass scheme for charged-current DIS at NNLO and beyond
• Exploring Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the GeV Regime using MINERvA
• Hard exclusive neutrino production of a light meson
• Long-baseline neutrino oscillation physics potential of the DUNE experiment
• Use of Neutrino Scattering Events with Low Hadronic Recoil to Inform Neutrino Flux and Detector Energy Scale
• Neutron detection and application with a novel 3D-projection scintillator tracker in the future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments
• A substandard candle: the low-$\nu$ method at few-GeV neutrino energies
• Towards a Unified Model of Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions
• Radiative corrections to inverse muon decay for accelerator neutrinos
• Unraveling the Flux-Averaged Neutrino-Nucleus Cross Section
• Neutrino Induced Charged Current Coherent Pion Production for Constraining the Muon Neutrino Flux at DUNE
• Towards mono-energetic virtual $\nu$ beam cross-section measurements: A feasibility study of $\nu$-Ar interaction analysis with DUNE-PRISM