Improved constraint on the MINERvA medium energy neutrino flux using $\bar{\nu}e^{-} \!\rightarrow \bar{\nu}e^{-}$ data

TL;DR

This paper presents a new measurement of neutrino-electron elastic scattering using the MINERvA detector, significantly reducing the uncertainty in the neutrino flux for both neutrino and antineutrino beams, which improves flux predictions for neutrino experiments.

Contribution

The study provides the first measurement of neutrino-electron elastic scattering with an antineutrino beam, reducing flux uncertainties in the medium energy NuMI beam.

Findings

Reduced -40% flux uncertainty for  in neutrino and antineutrino beams.

Combined measurements improve flux constraints for neutrino experiments.

Demonstrates the effectiveness of neutrino-electron scattering for flux calibration.

Abstract

Processes with precisely known cross sections, like neutrino electron elastic scattering ($\nu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \nu e^{-}$) and inverse muon decay ($\nu_\mu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \mu^{-} \nu_e$) have been used by MINERvA to constrain the uncertainty on the NuMI neutrino beam flux. This work presents a new measurement of neutrino elastic scattering with electrons using the medium energy \numubar enhanced NuMI beam. A sample of 578 events after background subtraction is used in combination with the previous measurement on the \numu beam and the inverse muon decay measurement to reduce the uncertainty on the \numu flux in the \numu-enhanced beam from 7.6\% to 3.3\% and the \numubar flux in the \numubar-enhanced beam from 7.8\% to 4.7\%.