Measurement of final-state correlations in neutrino muon-proton mesonless production on hydrocarbon at $\langle E_\nu\rangle=3$ GeV

TL;DR

This paper measures final-state correlations in neutrino-induced mesonless production on hydrocarbon, revealing discrepancies with current models at certain momentum transfers, and introduces a new technique applicable to liquid argon detectors.

Contribution

It presents a novel measurement of nuclear effects in neutrino interactions using kinematic imbalances, highlighting areas where models under-predict cross sections and proposing a technique for future detector analyses.

Findings

Models under-predict cross sections at intermediate momentum transfers.

The technique effectively probes initial- and final-state nuclear effects.

Results suggest the need for improved nuclear modeling in neutrino interactions.

Abstract

Final-state kinematic imbalances are measured in mesonless production of $\nu_\mu + A \to \mu^- + p + X$ in the MINERvA tracker. Initial- and final-state nuclear effects are probed using the direction of the $\mu^-$-p transverse momentum imbalance and the initial-state momentum of the struck neutron. Differential cross sections are compared to predictions based on current approaches to medium modeling. These models under-predict the cross section at intermediate intranuclear momentum transfers that generally exceed the Fermi momenta. As neutrino interaction models need to correctly incorporate the effect of the nucleus in order to predict neutrino energy resolution in oscillation experiments, this result points to a region of phase space where additional cross section strength is needed in current models, and demonstrates a new technique that would be suitable for use in fine grained liquid argon detectors where the effect of the nucleus may be even larger.