Measurement Of Inclusive Anti Neutrino Cross Section And Ration To Neutrino Cross Section As A Function Of Muon Kinematics

Measurement of inclusive anti neutrino cross section and ratio to neutrino cross section as a function of muon kinematics

The MINERvA experiment delves deep into the world of neutrino nucleus interactions to piece together a guidebook of measurements essential to advancing cross section models. The next generation of long baseline neutrino experiments require a high precision understanding of neutrino nucleus interactions to measure oscillation parameters. The MINERvA experiment uses an on-axis flux peaking at 6 GeV from the NuMI beamline at Fermilab.

This talk will present a measurement of the inclusive anti neutrino cross section, in terms of muon kinematics, on the hydrocarbon tracker region of the MINERvA detector. An inclusive measurement in terms of muon kinematics will make for a comparatively easier comparison to model predictions, as such a measurement reduces the need for an accurate prediction of hadronic activity, which is harder to model.

Furthermore, muon kinematics are easier to reconstruct in the detector and a two-dimensional measurement yields a more detailed view of the phase space being explored. Moreover, the measured cross section can be compared to the baseline model broken down by the predicted interaction channel. Some channels dominate in certain parts of phase space and will motivate which aspects of the model require more improvement.

This measurement is extracted in anti-neutrino mode as long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments rely on a high precision understanding of both neutrino and anti-neutrino nucleus interactions. The neutrino counterpart of this measurement has already been published [1]. Model comparisons are presented for the extracted cross section measurement and its ratio to the neutrino cross section.

[1] D. Ruterbories et al. (MINERvA), Measurement of inclusive charged-current νμ cross sections as a function of muon kinematics at < Eν >∼ 6 GeV on hydrocarbon, Phys. Rev. D 104, 092007 (2021), arXiv:2106.16210 [hep-ex].