First measurement of the muon neutrino charged current single pion production cross section on water with the T2K near detector

Abstract

The T2K off-axis near detector, ND280, is used to make the first differential cross section measurements of muon neutrino charged current single positive pion production on a water target at energies ∼0.8 GeV.The differential measurements are presented as a function of the muon and pion kinematics, in the restricted phase space defined by p π þ > 200 MeV=c, p μ > 200 MeV=c, cosðθ π þ Þ > 0.3 and cosðθ μ Þ > 0.3. The total flux integrated ν μ charged current single positive pion production cross section on water in the restricted phase space is measured to be hσi ϕ ¼ 4.25 AE 0.48ðstatÞ AE 1.56ðsystÞ × 10 −40 cm 2 =nucleon. The total cross section is consistent with the NEUT prediction (5.03 × 10 −40 cm 2 =nucleon) and 2σ lower than the GENIE prediction (7.68 × 10 −40 cm 2 =nucleon). The differential cross sections are in good agreement with the NEUT generator. The GENIE simulation reproduces well the shapes of the distributions, but overestimates the overall cross section normalization.

Neutrino trident scattering at near detectors

“…The charged current version serves mainly as a background to µ + µ − tridents, but can also appear as a background for e ± µ ∓ tridents for incoming electron neutrinos or antineutrinos. It has been studied before at MiniBooNE [60], MINERνA [61,62], T2K [28,63], and for the first time in LAr at ArgoNeuT [64]. This process has a very distict low 4-momentum transfer to the nucleus |t| [61], but a much flatter distribution in invariant mass if compared to trident.…”

Modeling neutrino-induced charged pion production on water at T2K kinematics

“…The data was obtained with the ND280 detector in the T2K experiment. The phase space is restricted to P µ > 200 MeV, P π > 200 MeV, cos θ π > 0.3, and cos θ µ > 0.3 [4]. The signal is defined as a single π + and muon in the final state with no other mesons.…”

“…Neutrino energies from beams in accelerator-based experiments, such as MiniBooNE [1,2], T2K [3,4], MIN-ERvA [5,6] and NOvA [7], are spread over a broad range with contributions from increasingly more energetic neutrinos (as is the case in e.g. DUNE [8]).…”

“…In this paper we compare the predictions of the hybrid relativistic plane wave impulse approximation (hybrid-RPWIA) model for SPP with the charged-current single charged pion (CC1π + ) cross section on water reported by the T2K experiment [4]. The T2K ν µ -flux has a peak for neutrino energies of approximately 600 MeV.…”

Muon-neutrino-induced charged-current cross section without pions: Theoretical analysis

“…Both of these data sets, the one from MiniBooNE and the one from MINERvA, seem to be incompatible with each other, both in absolute magnitude and in their spectral shape [6,7]. More recently T2K has also obtained data on pion production, * Contact e-mail: mosel@physik.uni-giessen.de both on CH [8] and on H 2 O as targets [9] in an energy range close to that of MiniBooNE. We have analyzed the latter data in [10] 1 .…”