Charged-Current Interaction Measurements in MiniBooNE

TL;DR

MiniBooNE's high-statistics measurements of muon neutrino CCQE interactions on carbon demonstrate that a modified Fermi gas model with specific parameters effectively describes low-energy neutrino scattering, aiding in neutrino oscillation studies.

Contribution

This study provides precise measurements of CCQE interactions and refines the Fermi gas model parameters for better neutrino interaction predictions.

Findings

Effective axial mass MA=1.23 +- 0.20 GeV

Pauli-blocking parameter kappa=1.019 +- 0.011

Model accurately characterizes CCQE events on carbon

Abstract

Neutrino oscillation is the only known phenomenon for physics beyond the standard model. To investigate this phenomenon, the understanding of low energy neutrino scattering (200<E<2000 MeV) is the crucial task for high energy physicists. In this energy region, the charged current quasi-elastic (CCQE) neutrino interaction is the dominant process, and experiments require a precise model to predict signal samples. Using a high-statistics sample of muon neutrino CCQE events, MiniBooNE finds that a simple Fermi gas model, with appropriate adjustments, accurately characterizes the CCQE events on carbon. The extracted parameters include an effective axial mass, MA=1.23 +- 0.20 GeV, and a Pauli-blocking parameter, kappa = 1.019 +- 0.011.