Measurement of muon neutrino quasielastic scattering on a hydrocarbon target at Eν ~ 3.5 GeV

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Jul 12;111(2):022502. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.022502. Epub 2013 Jul 11.

Abstract

We report a study of ν(μ) charged-current quasielastic events in the segmented scintillator inner tracker of the MINERvA experiment running in the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. The events were selected by requiring a μ- and low calorimetric recoil energy separated from the interaction vertex. We measure the flux-averaged differential cross section, dσ/dQ², and study the low energy particle content of the final state. Deviations are found between the measured dσ/dQ² and the expectations of a model of independent nucleons in a relativistic Fermi gas. We also observe an excess of energy near the vertex consistent with multiple protons in the final state.