Measurement of Neutrino-Nucleon Neutral Current Elastic Scattering in MiniBooNE

TL;DR

MiniBooNE measured the neutrino-nucleon neutral current elastic cross-section using high-statistics data, performed model tests with different axial vector masses, and explored using proton-enriched events to probe strange quark contributions to nucleon spin.

Contribution

The paper provides the first high-statistics measurement of the neutral current elastic cross-section on mineral oil and discusses a novel method to probe strange quark effects in nucleons.

Findings

Measured flux-averaged differential cross-section.

Performed $ ext{chi}^2$ tests with various axial vector masses.

Proposed using proton-enriched events to study strange quark contributions.

Abstract

Using a high-statistics sample of neutral current elastic neutrino interactions, MiniBooNE measured the flux-averaged neutral current elastic differential cross-section on mineral oil ($CH_2$). Using the latter, a $\chi^2$ test of MC with different values of the axial vector mass has been performed. Also, a possibility of using a sample of neutral current elastic proton-enriched events above Cherenkov threshold to measure the ratio $\nu p\to \nu p /\nu N\to \nu N$ is discussed. This ratio is sensitive to the strange quark contribution to the nucleon spin, $\Delta s$.