Measurement of the muon neutrino inclusive charged-current cross section in the energy range of 1-3 GeV with the T2K INGRID detector

TL;DR

This paper measures the muon neutrino charged-current cross section on iron in the 1-3 GeV energy range using the T2K INGRID detector, providing data consistent with existing models and introducing a new method for energy-dependent cross section determination.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to measure neutrino-nucleus cross sections as a function of energy using off-axis angle variation and event topology in the T2K INGRID detector.

Findings

Measured cross sections at 1.1, 2.0, and 3.3 GeV with uncertainties.

Results agree with current neutrino interaction generators.

Method enables new energy-dependent cross section measurements.

Abstract

We report a measurement of the $\nu_{\mu}$-nucleus inclusive charged current cross section (=$\sigma^{cc}$) on iron using data from exposed to the J-PARC neutrino beam. The detector consists of 14 modules in total, which are spread over a range of off-axis angles from 0$^\circ$ to 1.1$^\circ$. The variation in the neutrino energy spectrum as a function of the off-axis angle, combined with event topology information, is used to calculate this cross section as a function of neutrino energy. The cross section is measured to be $\sigma^{cc}(1.1\text{ GeV}) = 1.10 \pm 0.15$ $(10^{-38}\text{cm}^2/\text{nucleon})$, $\sigma^{cc}(2.0\text{ GeV}) = 2.07 \pm 0.27$ $(10^{-38}\text{cm}^2/\text{nucleon})$, and $\sigma^{cc}(3.3\text{ GeV}) = 2.29 \pm 0.45$ $(10^{-38}\text{cm}^2/\text{nucleon})$, at energies of 1.1, 2.0, and 3.3 GeV, respectively. These results are consistent with the cross section calculated by the neutrino interaction generators currently used by T2K. More importantly, the method described here opens up a new way to determine the energy dependence of neutrino-nucleus cross sections.