Electron neutrino charged-current quasielastic scattering in the MINERvA experiment

TL;DR

This paper reports the first experimental measurement of the electron neutrino charged-current quasielastic cross section at a few-GeV energy scale, providing critical data for neutrino oscillation experiments and validating theoretical models.

Contribution

It presents the first direct measurement of an exclusive electron neutrino CCQE-like process at relevant energies, including differential cross-sections and a comparison with muon neutrino data.

Findings

Measured differential cross-sections vs. electron energy, angle, and Q^2.

Found satisfactory agreement with GENIE predictions.

Provided the first experimental ratio of electron to muon neutrino cross sections at these energies.

Abstract

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.