Neutrino-Nucleus Cross-Section Measurements in the Near Detector of the T2K Experiment

Abstract

The studies of neutrino-nucleus cross sections play an important role in better understand- ing the mechanisms that rule the neutrino interactions and in more precise measurements of the neutrino oscillation parameters. This monograph is focused on the measurements of neutrino cross sections from the accelerator neutrino beam with the mean energy of 0.7 GeV using the near detector of the T2K experiment. The monograph describes in detail the models of neutrino-nucleus interactions in this energy regime that are currently on the market. It also gives an overview of the world experimental results and outlines the prospects for future cross-section measurements. An entire chapter of this monograph is dedicated to the analyses published by the T2K experiment. The monograph contains a description of the T2K experiment, including the experi- mental setup, research program, and characterization of the Monte Carlo simulation and event reconstruction. A separate chapter is dedicated to the detailed explanation of the techniques and methods used in the cross-section measurements in T2K with a special emphasis on the maximum likelihood approach. Two analyses describing the charged current single charged pion production (CC1π) on water and charged current with no pions on lead and carbon are reported. The measured CC1π total flux-integrated cross section is compatible with Monte Carlo predictions from the NEUT generator. GENIE predictions are within two standard deviations. Further extensions of these studies including the enlarged phase space of the measurement and using more data should allow analysers to compute a differential cross section and minimize the model dependence.