Simultaneous measurement of proton and lepton kinematics in quasielastic-like $\nu_{\mu}$-hydrocarbon interactions from 2 to 20 GeV

• Main Authors: The MINERvA Collaboration, Ruterbories, D, Akhter, S, Dar, Z. Ahmad, Akbar, F, Ansari, V, Ascencio, M. V, Athar, M. Sajjad, Bashyal, A, Bercellie, A, Betancourt, M, Bodek, A, Bonilla, J. L, Bravar, A, Budd, H, Caceres, G, Cai, T, Carneiro, M. F, Díaz, G. A, da Motta, H, Felix, J, Fields, L, Filkins, A, Fine, R, Gago, A. M, Gallagher, H, Gaur, P. K, Ghosh, A, Gilligan, S. M, Gran, R, Haase, E, Harris, D. A, Henry, S, Jacobsen, K, Jena, D, Jena, S, Kleykamp, J, Klustová, A, Kordosky, M, Last, D, Lozano, A, Lu, X. -G, Maher, E, Manly, S, Mann, W. A, Mauger, C, McFarland, K. S, McGowan, A. M, Messerly, B, Miller, J, Moreno, O, Morfín, J. G, Naples, D, Nelson, J. K, Nguyen, C, Olivier, A, Paolone, V, Perdue, G. N, Plows, K. -J, Ramírez, M. A, Ransome, R. D, Ray, H, Schellman, H, Salinas, C. J. Solano, Su, H, Sultana, M, Syrotenko, V. S, Valencia, E, Vaughan, N. H, Waldron, A. V, Wascko, M. O, Wret, C, Yaeggy, B, Zazueta, L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 14.03.2022
• Subjects: Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2203.08022

Neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering, a reaction category extensively used in neutrino oscillation measurements, probes nuclear effects that govern neutrino-nucleus interactions. This Letter reports the first measurement of the triple-differential cross section for $\nu_{\mu}$ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wide-band beam spanning 2 $\leq$ E$_\nu \leq$ 20 GeV. The measurement maps the correlations among transverse and longitudinal muon momenta and summed proton kinetic energies, and compares them to predictions from a state-of-art simulation. Discrepancies are observed that likely reflect shortfalls with modeling of pion and nucleon intranuclear scattering and/or spectator nucleon ejection from struck nuclei. The separate determination of leptonic and hadronic variables can inform experimental approaches to neutrino-energy estimation.