Energy Dependence Analysis of Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in Scintillator for MINERvA

Thesis/Dissertation · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2023

OSTI ID:1996929

Srivastava, Asit ^[1]

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1. Minnesota U.

This thesis is on the intrinsic energy dependence in neutrino-nucleus interaction models, especially quasielastic scattering and 2p2h process, and the implications for understanding data from MINERvA, NOvA, and DUNE. Neutrino-nucleus interactions are modeled using fve structure functions, W1, W2, W3, W4 and W5, and each structure function contributes diferently to the energy dependence once it enters the cross-section calculations. The energy independent term in the calculations contains only W2 and the next lower order term (of the order 1/E) contains W3 also. In this thesis, we show that W2 is good enough to describe MINERvA data and energy dependence coming from the cross-section directly is small. However, W3 will be signifcant for lower energy experiments such as NOvA and DUNE (especially at and below the oscillation maximum). We have also developed a method to extract structure functions directly from MINERvA data though we find that systematic uncertainties present in the data are too big to successfully determine 1/E Term. In addition to this, we have applied muon angle cuts on MINERvA data and MC, which have their own energy dependent effects. An apparent energy dependent discrepancy comes from known shortcomings especially in the pion production model. Finally, because the energy dependence analysis has similarities to the low-$$\nu$$ method, we have evaluated discrepancies between the data and MC in light of diferent fux constraint techniques. The results suggest including MINERvA s low-$$\nu$$ method constraint is an improvement.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1996929
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-MASTERS-2023-01; oai:inspirehep.net:2691230
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS