Measuring the Muon Neutrino and Muon Antineutrino Induced Charged-Current Coherent Pion Production Cross Section on Carbon at the T2K Experiment

The Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment located in Japan. The experiment aims to measure neutrino oscillation parameters through measurements of neutrino interaction rates at various locations after production. In addition, the T2K near detector ND280 can also perform neutrino cross-section measurements.

The muon neutrino induced charged-current coherent pion production (COH) process and the muon antineutrino induced coherent pion production process are not well modelled, and only a handful of experimental measurements are available to set constraints in the theoretical models. This thesis describes two new measurements of muon neutrino and muon antineutrino induced CC-COH using the T2K near detector ND280. Both measurements are performed with a binned likelihood fitter framework developed by the T2K collaboration. The theoretical model used in the neutrino event generator for the COH process is the Berger-Sehgal model. The first measurement uses the ND280 data taken with the muon neutrino enhanced beam, with a mean neutrino energy of 0.849 GeV, and the measured CC-COH cross section on carbon is 2.98 ± 0.37 (stat.) ± 0.58 (syst.) X 10^-40 cm^2. This is an updated measurement of a previously published T2K result with doubled statistics and an improved understanding of the systematic uncertainties. The second measurement uses the ND280 data taken with the muon antineutrino enhanced beam, with a mean neutrino energy of 0.849 GeV, and the measured CC-COH cross section on carbon is 3.05 ± 0.71 (stat.) ± 0.84 (syst.) X 10^-40 cm^2. This is the first measurement of muon antineutrino CC-COH at the sub-GeV neutrino energy range.