MINOS · 2015
Study of Quasielastic Scattering using Charged-Current νμ -Iron Interactions in the MINOS Near Detector
Phys.Rev.D 91 012005 · 10.1103/PhysRevD.91.012005
Measurements
| Current | Flavor | Target | Topology | Type | Observables | Energy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CC | νμ | Fe | CCQE | single-diff | differential Q2 distribution | E: 1-8GeV |
Abstract
Kinematic distributions from an inclusive sample of 1.41 x 10⁶ charged-current nu_mu interactions on iron, obtained using the MINOS Near Detector exposed to a wide-band beam with peak flux at 3 GeV, are compared to a conventional treatment of neutrino scattering within a Fermi gas nucleus. Results are used to guide the selection of a subsample enriched in quasielastic nu_mu Fe interactions, containing an estimated 123,000 quasielastic events of incident energies 1 < E_nu < 8 GeV, with <E_nu> = 2.79 GeV. Four additional subsamples representing topological and kinematic sideband regions to quasielastic scattering are also selected for the purpose of evaluating backgrounds. Comparisons using subsample distributions in four-momentum transfer Q² show the Monte Carlo model to be inadequate at low Q². Its shortcomings are remedied via inclusion of a Q²-dependent suppression function for baryon resonance production, developed from the data. A chi-square fit of the resulting Monte Carlo simulation to the shape of the Q² distribution for the quasielastic-enriched sample is carried out with the axial-vector mass M_A of the dipole axial-vector form factor of the neutron as a free parameter. The effective M_A which best describes the data is 1.23 +0.13/-0.09 (fit) +0.12/-0.15 (syst.) GeV.
Citation
@article{MINOS:2014axb,
author = "Adamson, P. and others",
collaboration = "MINOS",
title = "{Study of quasielastic scattering using charged-current \ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\mu} -iron interactions in the MINOS near detector}",
eprint = "1410.8613",
archivePrefix = "arXiv",
primaryClass = "hep-ex",
reportNumber = "FERMILAB-PUB-14-401-E",
doi = "10.1103/PhysRevD.91.012005",
journal = "Phys. Rev. D",
volume = "91",
number = "1",
pages = "012005",
year = "2015"
}