Electron neutrino charged-current quasielastic scattering in the MINERvA experiment

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) cross section on nuclei is an important input parameter to appearance-type neutrino oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically work from the muon neutrino cross section and apply corrections from theoretical arguments to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross section, but to date there has been no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments. We present the first measurement of an exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions, namely, the cross section for a CCQE-like process, made using the MINERvA detector. The result is given as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and square of the four-momentum transferred to the nucleus, $Q^2$. We also compute the ratio to a muon neutrino cross-section in $Q^2$ from MINERvA. We find satisfactory agreement between this measurement and the predictions of the GENIE generator.Comment: Presentation at the DPF 2015 Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields, Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 4-8, 201

Recent highlights from GENIE v3

AbstractThe release of GENIE v3.0.0 was a major milestone in the long history of the GENIE project, delivering several alternative comprehensive neutrino interaction models, improved charged-lepton scattering simulations, a range of beyond the Standard Model simulation capabilities, improved experimental interfaces, expanded core framework capabilities, and advanced new frameworks for the global analysis of neutrino scattering data and tuning of neutrino interaction models. Steady progress continued following the release of GENIE v3.0.0. New tools and a large number of new physics models, comprehensive model configurations, and tunes have been made publicly available and planned for release in v3.2.0. This article highlights some of the most recent technical and physics developments in the GENIE v3 series.</jats:p

Measurement of electron neutrino CCQE-like cross-section in MINERvA

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasi-elastic (CCQE) cross-section on nuclei is an important input parameter to appearance-type neutrino oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically work from the muon neutrino cross-section and apply corrections from theoretical arguments to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross-section, but to date there has been no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments. We present a preliminary result from the MINERvA experiment on the first measurement of an exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions, namely, the cross-section for a CCQE-like process. The result is given both as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and $Q^{2}$, as well as a total cross-section vs. neutrino energy.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Neutrino Factories and Future Neutrino Beam Facilities, 25-30 August, 2014, University of Glasgow, United Kingdo

Measurement of the charged-current quasi-elastic cross-section for electron neutrinos on a hydrocarbon target

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2015.We report herein the first-ever measurement of a cross-section for an exclusive state in electron neutrino scattering at the GeV scale, which was made using the MINERνA detector in the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. We present the electron neutrino CCQE differential cross-sections, which are averaged over neutrinos of energies 1-10 GeV (with mean energy of about 3 GeV), in terms of various kinematic variables: final-state electron angle, final-state electron energy, and the square of the four-momentum transferred to the nucleus by the neutrino, Q2. We also provide a total cross-section vs. neutrino energy. While our measurement of this process is found to be in agreement with the predictions of the GENIE event generator, we also report on an unpredicted photon-like process we observe in a similar kinematic regime. The absence of this process from models for neutrino interactions is a potential stumbling block for future on-axis neutrino oscillation experiments. We include kinematic and particle species identification characterizations which can be used in building models to help address this shortcoming