Electron Neutrino Charged-Current Quasielastic Scattering in the MINERvA Experiment

TL;DR

This paper presents the first experimental measurements of electron-neutrino CCQE cross sections at few-GeV energies using the MINERvA detector, providing crucial data for neutrino oscillation experiments and comparing results with theoretical models.

Contribution

It provides the first measurements of electron-neutrino CCQE-like cross sections and their ratios to muon-neutrino cross sections, validating and challenging existing theoretical predictions.

Findings

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

Found agreement with GENIE generator predictions.

Identified an unpredicted photon-like background interpreted as neutral-coherent diffractive scattering.

Abstract

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) cross section on nuclei is an important input parameter for electron neutrino appearance oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically begin with the muon neutrino cross section and apply theoretical corrections to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross section. However, at present no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments exists. We present the cross sections for a CCQE-like process determined using the MINERvA detector, which are the first measurements of any exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions. 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 these measurements and the predictions of the GENIE generator. We furthermore report on a photon-like background unpredicted by the generator which we interpret as neutral-coherent diffractive scattering from hydrogen.