Measurement of neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at ${E}_{\ensuremath{\nu}}\ensuremath{\sim}1\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$

Measurement of neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at $E_{ν} \sim 1 GeV$

A. A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al. (MiniBooNE Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. D 83, 052007 – Published 23 March 2011

Abstract

Using a high-statistics, high-purity sample of $ν_{μ}$ -induced charged current, charged pion events in mineral oil ( ${CH}_{2}$ ), MiniBooNE reports a collection of interaction cross sections for this process. This includes measurements of the $CC π^{+}$ cross section as a function of neutrino energy, as well as flux-averaged single- and double-differential cross sections of the energy and direction of both the final-state muon and pion. In addition, each of the single-differential cross sections are extracted as a function of neutrino energy to decouple the shape of the MiniBooNE energy spectrum from the results. In many cases, these cross sections are the first time such quantities have been measured on a nuclear target and in the 1 GeV energy range.

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Received 17 November 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.83.052007

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Vol. 83, Iss. 5 — 1 March 2011

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Figure 1
The straight muon and kinked pion likelihood ratios are shown for Monte Carlo muons (red) and pions (black) generated with full hadronic interactions and decays. The particles were generated from a flat kinetic energy distribution ranging from 50 to 450 MeV to approximate the true pion energy spectrum of $CC π^{+}$ events. There is separation in the muon and pion peaks, and a large excess of pion events is seen along the high side tail.
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Figure 2
The fractional pion kinetic energy reconstruction bias from the straight and kinked pion fits to Monte Carlo-generated single pion events is shown. The low-energy shoulder is significantly reduced in the kinked fitter, and rather than being 10% low, as is the case with the straight fitter, the peak from the kinked fitter is centered at zero.
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Figure 3
The fractional pion kinetic energy reconstruction bias is plotted versus the true energy for Monte Carlo-generated single pion events. The low-fit-energy shoulder is caused by higher energy pions.
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Figure 4
The angle between the reconstructed and true pion directions is shown for both straight and kinked pion fits to Monte Carlo-generated single pion events. The population in the lowest few bins where the properly reconstructed events lie is nearly twice as large for the kinked fitter.
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Figure 5
The fractional muon kinetic energy reconstruction bias is shown for all Monte Carlo signal events, and for correctly paired signal events after all cuts other than the $m_{π + N}$ cut. Most of the low-fit-energy tail is due to events where the pion was misidentified as the muon.
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Figure 6
The fractional pion kinetic energy reconstruction bias is shown for all Monte Carlo signal events, and for correctly paired signal events after all cuts other than the $m_{π + N}$ cut. The low-reconstructed-energy shoulder from the pion-only fit in Fig. 2 is seen here as well.
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Figure 7
The reconstructed angle between the muon and pion directions for Monte Carlo $CC π^{+}$ events is shown versus the larger (i.e. worse reconstructed) of the two reconstructed/true angles: $θ (μ_{rec}, μ_{true})$ and $θ (π_{rec}, π_{true})$ . The bins in the left-most columns represent events where both tracks have been properly reconstructed. Events in which the tracks have been misidentified appear along the diagonal.
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Figure 8
The neutrino energy reconstruction bias is plotted against the true neutrino energy for Monte Carlo generated $CC π^{+}$ events. The reconstructed and true values are well correlated over the entire energy spectrum.
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Figure 9
The reconstructed $π + N$ mass distribution is shown for both the data and the Monte Carlo simulation with full systematic uncertainties. The MC distribution has been normalized to the data. The signal and background components of the Monte Carlo distribution are also shown. At MiniBooNE energies, the majority of $CC π^{+}$ events come from decays of the $Δ (1232)$ resonance.
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Figure 10
The reconstructed Monte Carlo $π^{+} + N$ background distribution is divided into CCQE background events, and all other backgrounds. Since the CCQE events do not contain a pion, they are peaked near threshold ( $m_{π} + m_{N}$ ).
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Figure 11
The $Q^{2}$ (fit-true)/true distribution for Monte Carlo events is plotted versus the true $Q^{2}$ . Each column of true $Q^{2}$ has been normalized to unity. The reconstruction is able to determine the true $Q^{2}$ over the full range of the measurement.
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Figure 12
The tank hits distribution in data is shown for the second subevent before and after requiring fewer than 6 hits in the veto. The Michel electron peak is mostly unaffected, while the large tail from entering comic rays is mostly removed.
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Figure 13
The distance between the tank wall and event vertex along the muon trajectory is shown for both data and Monte Carlo events. All other cuts have been applied and the error bars include only data statistics. The cut on this distribution removes all events below 150 cm.
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Figure 14
The distance between the tank wall and event vertex along the pion trajectory is shown for both data and Monte Carlo events. All other cuts have been applied and the error bars include only data statistics. The cut on this distribution removes all events below 150 cm.
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Figure 15
The Monte Carlo $m_{p i + N}$ distribution shows a correlation between the reconstructed and true distributions at low mass. At high reconstructed mass, the distribution is dominated by events with a high energy muon misidentified as a pion. A cut is placed at $1350 MeV / c^{2}$ to remove these events.
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Figure 16
The fractional muon kinetic energy reconstruction bias is shown for Monte Carlo $CC π^{+}$ events before and after the $m_{π + N}$ cut with all other cuts applied. The lower plot shows the fraction of events that pass the cut in each bin. The tail at low-fit-energy is significantly reduced.
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Figure 17
The reconstructed-versus-true (top), bin-migration (middle), and unfolding (bottom) matrices are shown for muon kinetic energy. The bin-migration matrix is formed by normalizing the true columns of the Monte Carlo reconstructed-versus-true matrix to unity, while the unfolding matrix is formed by normalizing the reconstructed rows.
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Figure 18
The reconstructed muon kinetic energy is plotted in each of the 67 optical model multisims. The central value Monte Carlo distribution (red) is overlayed for comparison.
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Figure 19
The $ν_{μ}$ energy spectrum is shown (top) along with the fractional flux errors (bottom). The fractional errors are cumulative such that each successive error band includes a quadrature sum of the previous errors such that the outer band gives the total error. A numerical description of the energy spectrum is given in Table 19.
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Figure 20
The $σ (E_{ν})$ measurement is shown with cumulative systematic errors. The absolutely normalized Monte Carlo prediction is shown for comparison. The bottom plot shows the fractional uncertainties and the ratio of the Monte Carlo prediction to the measurement.
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Figure 21
The $\partial σ / \partial (Q^{2})$ measurement is shown with cumulative systematic errors. The absolutely normalized Monte Carlo prediction is shown for comparison. The bottom plot shows the fractional uncertainties and the ratio of the Monte Carlo prediction to the measurement.
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Figure 22
The $\partial σ / \partial (K E_{μ})$ measurement is shown with cumulative systematic errors. The absolutely normalized Monte Carlo prediction is shown for comparison. The bottom plot shows the fractional uncertainties and the ratio of the Monte Carlo prediction to the measurement.
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Figure 23
The $\partial σ / \partial (K E_{π})$ measurement is shown with cumulative systematic errors. The absolutely normalized Monte Carlo prediction is shown for comparison. The bottom plot shows the fractional uncertainties and the ratio of the Monte Carlo prediction to the measurement.
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Figure 24
The measured $\partial^{2} σ / \partial (\cos (θ_{μ, ν})) \partial (K E_{μ})$ values are shown (top) along with the total fractional uncertainties (middle). Empty bins indicate regions where no measurement has been made. The Monte Carlo predicted cross section is shown for comparison (bottom).
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Figure 25
The measured $\partial^{2} σ / \partial (\cos (θ_{π, ν})) \partial (K E_{π})$ values are shown (top) along with the total fractional uncertainties (middle). Empty bins indicate regions where no measurement has been made. The Monte Carlo predicted cross section is shown for comparison (bottom).
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Figure 26
The measured $\partial σ (E_{ν}) / \partial (Q^{2})$ values are shown (top) along with the total fractional uncertainties (middle). Empty bins indicate regions where no measurement has been made. The Monte Carlo predicted cross section is shown for comparison (bottom).
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Figure 27
The measured $\partial σ (E_{ν}) / \partial (K E_{μ})$ values are shown (top) along with the total fractional uncertainties (middle). Empty bins indicate regions where no measurement has been made. The Monte Carlo predicted cross section is shown for comparison (bottom).
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Figure 28
The measured $\partial σ (E_{ν}) / \partial (K E_{π})$ values are shown (top) along with the total fractional uncertainties (middle). Empty bins indicate regions where no measurement has been made. The Monte Carlo predicted cross section is shown for comparison (bottom).
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Physical Review D

covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology

Measurement of neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at $E_{ν} \sim 1 GeV$

A. A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al. (MiniBooNE Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. D 83, 052007 – Published 23 March 2011

Abstract

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Physical Review D

covering particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology

Measurement of neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at Eν∼1 GeV

A. A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al. (MiniBooNE Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. D 83, 052007 – Published 23 March 2011

Abstract

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Measurement of neutrino-induced charged-current charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at $E_{ν} \sim 1 GeV$