First Measurement of the Electron Neutrino Charged-Current Pion Production Cross Section on Carbon with the T2K Near Detector

TL;DR

This paper reports the first measurement of electron neutrino charged-current pion production on carbon using the T2K near detector, providing differential and total cross sections that test and challenge existing neutrino interaction models.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental measurement of this specific cross section on carbon, comparing results with multiple Monte Carlo generators to evaluate their accuracy.

Findings

Measured total flux-integrated cross section is lower than predictions.

Differential cross sections are provided for outgoing electron and pion.

Results highlight discrepancies in current neutrino interaction models.

Abstract

The T2K Collaboration presents the first measurement of electron neutrino-induced charged-current pion production on carbon in a restricted kinematical phase space. This is performed using data from the 2.5$^{\deg}$ off-axis near detector, ND280. The differential cross sections with respect to the outgoing electron and pion kinematics, in addition to the total flux-integrated cross section, are obtained. Comparisons between the measured and predicted cross section results using the Neut, Genie and NuWro Monte Carlo event generators are presented. The measured total flux-integrated cross section is [2.52 $\pm$ 0.52 (stat) $\pm$ 0.30 (sys)] x $10^{-39}$ cm$^2$ nucleon$^{-1}$, which is lower than the event generator predictions.