Measurement of the muon neutrino charged-current single $\pi^+$ production on hydrocarbon using the T2K off-axis near detector ND280

TL;DR

This paper presents precise measurements of muon neutrino charged-current single pion production cross sections on hydrocarbon at T2K, including the first Adler angle measurements, enhancing understanding of neutrino interactions with heavy nuclei.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of Adler angles in neutrino interactions with heavy nuclei and offers detailed differential cross sections at T2K energies.

Findings

Measured total cross section: (11.76 ± 0.44 (stat) ± 2.39 (syst)) × 10^{-40} cm^2 per nucleon.

First measurement of Adler angles for single charged pion production in neutrino interactions.

Provides detailed differential cross sections for muon neutrino interactions on hydrocarbon.

Abstract

We report the measurements of single and double differential cross section of muon neutrino charged-current interactions on carbon with a single positively charged pion in the final state at the T2K off-axis near detector using $5.56\times10^{20}$ protons on target. The analysis uses data control samples for the background subtraction and the cross section signal, defined as a single negatively charged muon and a single positively charged pion exiting from the target nucleus, is extracted using an unfolding method. The model dependent cross section, integrated over the T2K off-axis neutrino beam spectrum peaking at $0.6$~GeV, is measured to be $\sigma = (11.76 \pm 0.44 \text{(stat)} \pm 2.39 \text{(syst)}) \times 10^{-40} \text{cm}^2$~$\text{nucleon}^{-1}$. Various differential cross sections are measured, including the first measurement of the Adler angles for single charged pion production in neutrino interactions with heavy nuclei target.