Antineutrino Neutral Current Interactions in MiniBooNE

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1127915· OSTI ID:1127915

Dharmapalan, Ranjan ^[1]

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1. Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL (United States)

This dissertation reports the antineutrino-nucleus neutral current elastic scattering cross section on CH₂ measured by the MiniBooNE experiment located in Batavia, IL. The data set consists of 60,605 events passing the selection cuts corresponding to 10.1×10²⁰ POT, which represents the world’s largest sample of antineutrino neutral current elastic scattering events. The final sample is more than one order of magnitude lager that the previous antineutrino NCE scattering cross section measurement reported by the BNL E734 experiment. The measurement presented in this dissertation also spans a wider range in Q², including the low-Q² regime where the cross section rollover is clearly visible. A X²-based minimization was performed to determine the best value of the axial mass, M_A and the Pauli blocking scaling function, that matches the antineutrino NCE scattering data. However, the best fit values of M_A=1.29 GeV and K=1.026 still give a relatively poor X², which suggests that the underlying nuclear model (based largely on the relativistic Fermi gas model) may not be an accurate representation for this particular interaction. Additionally, we present a measurement of the antineutrino/neutrino-nucleus NCE scattering cross section ratio. The neutrino mode NCE sample used in this study, corresponding to 6.4 × 10²⁰ POT, is also the world’s largest sample (also by an order of magnitude). We have demonstrated that the ratio measurement is robust, as most of the correlated errors cancel, as expected. Furthermore, this ratio also proves to be rather insensitive to variations in the axial mass and the Pauli blocking parameter. This is the first time that this ratio has been experimentally reported. We believe this measurement will aid the theoretical physics community to test various model predictions of neutrino-nucleon/nucleus interactions.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1127915
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-THESIS-2012-29
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

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