Abstract
The total cross sections are important ingredients for the current and future neutrino oscillation experiments. We present measurements of the total charged-current neutrino and antineutrino cross sections on scintillator (CH) in the NuMI low-energy beamline using an in situ prediction of the shape of the flux as a function of neutrino energy from 2-50 GeV. This flux prediction takes advantage of the fact that neutrino and antineutrino interactions with low nuclear recoil energy (ν) have a nearly constant cross section as a function of incident neutrino energy. This measurement is the lowest energy application of the low-ν flux technique, the first time it has been used in the NuMI antineutrino beam configuration, and demonstrates that the technique is applicable to future neutrino beams operating at multi-GeV energies. The cross section measurements presented are the most precise measurements to date below 5 GeV.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 112007 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 94 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 20 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory under US Department of Energy Contract No.DE-AC02-07CH11359 which included the MINERvA construction project. Construction support was also granted by the United States National Science Foundation under Award PHY-0619727 and by the University of Rochester. Support for participating scientists was provided by NSF and DOE (USA), by CAPES and CNPq (Brazil), by CoNaCyT (Mexico), by CONICYT (Chile), by CONCYTEC, DGI-PUCP and IDI/IGI-UNI (Peru), and by the Latin American Center for Physics (CLAF).