Final-state kinematic imbalances are measured in mesonless production of ν_{μ}+A→μ^{-}+p+X in the MINERvA tracker. Initial- and final-state nuclear effects are probed using the direction of the μ^{-}-p transverse momentum imbalance and the initial-state momentum of the struck neutron. Differential cross sections are compared to predictions based on current approaches to medium modeling. These models underpredict the cross section at intermediate intranuclear momentum transfers that generally exceed the Fermi momenta. As neutrino interaction models need to correctly incorporate the effect of the nucleus in order to predict neutrino energy resolution in oscillation experiments, this result points to a region of phase space where additional cross section strength is needed in current models, and demonstrates a new technique that would be suitable for use in fine-grained liquid argon detectors where the effect of the nucleus may be even larger.
MINERvA presents a new analysis of neutrino induced quasielastic-like interactions in a hydrocarbon tracking target. We report a double-differential cross section using the muon transverse and longitudinal momentum. In addition, differential cross sections as a function of the square of the four-momentum
Elastic neutrino scattering on electrons is a precisely-known purely leptonic process that provides a standard candle for measuring neutrino flux in conventional neutrino beams. Using a total sample of 810 neutino-electron scatters after background subtraction, the measurement reduces the normalization uncertainty on the νµ NuMI flux between 2 and 20 GeV from 7.5% to 3.9%. This is the most precise measurement of neutrino-electron scattering to date, will reduce uncertainties on MINERνA's absolute cross section measurements, and demonstrates a technique that can be used in future neutrino beams such as LBNF.PACS numbers: definitely not 99.99+z
Faced with unresolved tensions between neutrino interaction measurements at few-GeV neutrino energies, current experiments are forced to accept large systematic uncertainties to cover discrepancies between their data and model predictions. In this paper, the widely used pion production model in GENIE is compared to four MINERvA charged current pion production measurements using NUISANCE. Tunings, i.e., adjustments of model parameters, to help match GENIE to MIN-ERvA and older bubble chamber data are presented here. We find that scattering off nuclear targets as measured in MINERvA is not in good agreement with expectations based upon scattering off nucleon (hydrogen or deuterium) targets in existing bubble chamber data. An additional ad hoc correction for the low-Q 2 region, where collective nuclear effects are expected to be large, is presented. While these tunings and corrections improve the agreement of GENIE with the data, the modeling is imperfect. The development of these tunings within the NUISANCE framework allows for straightforward extensions to other neutrino event generators and models, and allows omitting and including new data sets as they become available.
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