A study of the nuclear medium influence on transverse momentum of hadrons produced in deep inelastic neutrino scattering

TL;DR

This study investigates how nuclear effects influence the transverse momentum distributions of hadrons produced in deep inelastic neutrino scattering, revealing that nuclear effects enhance $<p_T^2>$ at low energies and are negligible at higher energies.

Contribution

It provides experimental measurements of nuclear effects on hadron transverse momentum in neutrino scattering and compares results with a simple intranuclear interaction model.

Findings

Nuclear effects increase $<p_T^2>$ at low $W$ and $ u$.

No nuclear influence observed at higher $W$ or $ u$.

Model qualitatively reproduces main data features.

Abstract

The influence of nuclear effects on the transverse momentum $(p_T)$ distributions of neutrinoproduced hadrons is investigated using the data obtained with SKAT propane-freon bubble chamber irradiated in the neutrino beam (with $E_{\nu}$ = 3-30 GeV) at Serpukhov accelerator. Dependences of $<p_T^2>$ on the kinematical variables of inclusive deep-inelastic scattering and of the produced hadrons are measured. It has been observed, that the nuclear effects cause an enhancement of $<p_T^2>$ of hadrons (more pronounced for the positively charged ones) produced in the target fragmentation region at low invariant mass of the hadronic system (2 $< W <$ 4 GeV) or at low energies transferred to the current quark (2 $< \nu < 9$ GeV). At higher $W$ or $\nu$, no influence of nuclear effects on $<p_T^2>$ is observed. Measurement results are compared with predictions of a simple model, incorporating secondary intranuclear interactions of hadrons (with a formation length extracted from the Lund fragmentation model), which qualitatively reproduces the main features of the data.