A substandard candle: the low-$\nu$ method at few-GeV neutrino energies

Abstract

As accelerator-neutrino oscillation experiments improve oscillation parameter constraints, control over systematic uncertainties on the incoming neutrino flux and interaction models is increasingly important. The intense beams offered by modern experiments permit a variety of options to constrain the flux using in situ "standard candle" measurements. These standard candles must use very well understood processes to avoid introducing bias. One option discussed in this context is the "low-$\nu$" method, designed to isolate neutrino interactions where there is low energy-transfer to the nucleus, such that the cross section is expected to be approximately constant as a function of neutrino energy. The shape of the low-energy transfer event sample can then be used to extract the flux shape. Applications of the method at high neutrino energies (many tens of GeV) are well understood. However, the applicability of the method at the few-GeV energies of current and future accelerator neutrino experiments remains unclear due to the presence of nuclear and form-factor effects. In this analysis we examine the prospects for improving constraints on accelerator neutrino fluxes with the low-$\nu$ method in an experiment-independent way, using (anti)neutrino interactions on argon and hydrocarbon targets from the GENIE, NEUT, NuWro and GiBUU event generators. The results show that flux constraints from the low-$\nu$ method would be severely dependent on the specific interaction model assumptions used in an analysis for neutrino energies less than 5 GeV. The spread of model predictions show that a low-$\nu$ analysis is unlikely to offer much improvement on typical neutrino flux uncertainties, even with a perfect detector. Notably -- running counter to the assumption inherent to the low-$\nu$ method -- the model-dependence increases with decreasing energy transfer for experiments in the few-GeV region.

arXiv commentVersion accepted for publication

References in corpus (69)

• PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
• PYTHIA 6.2 Physics and Manual
• The fate of hints: updated global analysis of three-flavor neutrino oscillations
• The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator
• The T2K Experiment
• Transport-theoretical Description of Nuclear Reactions
• Inclusive Charged--Current Neutrino--Nucleus Reactions
• The Neutrino Flux prediction at MiniBooNE
• NuSTEC White Paper: Status and Challenges of Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering
• The NuMI Neutrino Beam
• Inclusive Quasi-Elastic Charged-Current Neutrino-Nucleus Reactions
• The nucleon axial mass and the MiniBooNE Quasielastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering problem
• The T2K Neutrino Flux Prediction
• Final State Interactions Effects in Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions
• Precise Measurement of Neutrino and Anti-neutrino Differential Cross Sections
• Neutrino Flux Predictions for the NuMI Beam
• Electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering from the quasielastic to the resonance region
• Progress and open questions in the physics of neutrino cross sections
• Identification of nuclear effects in neutrino-carbon interactions at low three-momentum transfer
• Lepton Mass Effects in Single Pion Production by Neutrinos
• Neutrino and Antineutrino Inclusive Charged-current Cross Section Measurements with the MINOS Near Detector
• Charged-current neutrino-nucleus reactions within the SuSAv2-MEC approach
• Extensions of Superscaling from Relativistic Mean Field Theory: the SuSAv2 Model
• Neutrino Interactions with Nucleons and Nuclei: Importance for Long-Baseline Experiments
• A Hadronization Model for Few-GeV Neutrino Interactions
• Energy reconstruction in quasielastic scattering in the MiniBooNE and T2K experiments
• Low-energy excitations and quasielastic contribution to electron-nucleus and neutrino-nucleus scattering in the continuum random phase approximation
• Neutrino-Induced Reactions on Nuclei
• Superscaling in charged current neutrino quasielastic scattering in the relativistic impulse approximation
• NUISANCE: a neutrino cross-section generator tuning and comparison framework
• Quasielastic and multinucleon excitations in antineutrino-nucleus interactions
• Relativistic model of 2p-2h meson exchange currents in (anti)neutrino scattering
• Measurement of Neutrino Flux from Neutrino-Electron Elastic Scattering
• Implementation of the SuSAv2-MEC 1p1h and 2p2h models in GENIE and analysis of nuclear effects in T2K measurements
• Lepton Polarization in Neutrino-Nucleon Interactions
• Constraint of the MINERvA Medium Energy Neutrino Flux using Neutrino-Electron Elastic Scattering
• Theory of elastic neutrino-electron scattering
• General study of superscaling in quasielastic $(e,e^{\prime })$ and $(\nu ,\mu )$ reactions using the relativistic impulse approximation
• Scaling and isospin effects in quasielastic lepton-nucleus scattering in the Relativistic Mean Field Approach
• Reconstruction of Energy Spectra of Neutrino Beams Independent of Nuclear Effects
• A new method for an improved anti-neutrino energy reconstruction with charged-current interactions in next-generation detectors
• Single pion production in neutrino-nucleon Interactions
• Using world charged pion--nucleus scattering data to constrain an intranuclear cascade model
• Constraints in modeling the quasielastic response in inclusive lepton-nucleus scattering
• Neutrino-electron elastic scattering for flux determination at the DUNE oscillation experiment
• Relativistic descriptions of inclusive quasielastic electron scattering: application to scaling and superscaling ideas
• Measurements of ${\pi }^{\pm }$, $K^{\pm }$ and proton yields from the surface of the T2K replica target for incoming 31 GeV/c protons with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS
• Nuclear Transparency in Monte Carlo Neutrino Event Generators
• Measurements of ${\pi }^{\pm }$ differential yields from the surface of the T2K replica target for incoming 31 GeV/c protons with the NA61/SHINE spectrometer at the CERN SPS
• Pion production within the hybrid relativistic plane wave impulse approximation model at MiniBooNE and MINERvA kinematics
• Measurements of the Inclusive Neutrino and Antineutrino Charged Current Cross Sections in MINERvA Using the Low-$\nu$ Flux Method
• Emission of neutron-proton and proton-proton pairs in neutrino scattering
• Sensitivity of Neutrino-Nucleus Interaction Measurements to 2p2h Excitations
• Neutron measurements from anti-neutrino hydrocarbon reactions
• Electroweak Form Factors of the $\Delta$(1232) Resonance
• Lepton mass effects in weak CC single pion production
• On Recent Weak Single Pion Production Data
• A Precise Determination of (Anti)neutrino Fluxes with (Anti)neutrino-Hydrogen Interactions
• The algebraic solution of RPA equations for the charged current quasielastic neutrino - nucleus scattering
• Inclusive and exclusive neutrino-nucleus cross sections and the reconstruction of the interaction kinematics
• Methods to Determine Neutrino Flux at Low Energies:Investigation of the Low $\nu$ Method
• Progress in measurements of 0.1--10 GeV neutrino-nucleus scattering and anticipated results from future experiments
• Modeling quasielastic interactions of monoenergetic kaon decay-at-rest neutrinos
• Comparisons and challenges of modern neutrino scattering experiments (TENSIONS2016 report)
• Mean field approach to reconstructed neutrino energy distributions in accelerator-based experiments
• Cross-section measurements in the NOMAD experiment
• Constraining the NuMI neutrino flux using inverse muon decay reactions in MINERvA
• Use of Neutrino Scattering Events with Low Hadronic Recoil to Inform Neutrino Flux and Detector Energy Scale
• Extraction of Neutrino Flux with the Low $\nu$ Method at MiniBooNE Energies

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Inclusive cross section measurements in final states with and without protons for charged-current ${\nu }_{\mu }$-Ar scattering in MicroBooNE
• Neutron detection and application with a novel 3D-projection scintillator tracker in the future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments
• Data-driven model validation for neutrino-nucleus cross section measurements
• Implementation of the Martini-Ericson-Chanfray-Marteau RPA-based neutrino and antineutrino cross-section model in the GENIE neutrino event generator
• Towards mono-energetic virtual $\nu$ beam cross-section measurements: A feasibility study of $\nu$-Ar interaction analysis with DUNE-PRISM
• Neutrino Induced Charged Current Coherent Pion Production for Constraining the Muon Neutrino Flux at DUNE