Coherent production of pions and rho mesons in neutrino charged current interactions on neon nuclei at the Fermilab Tevatron

Abstract

The coherent production of single pions and and {rho} mesons in charged current interactions of neutrinos and antineutrinos on neon nuclei has been studied. The data were obtained using the Fermilab 15-foot Bubble Chamber, filled with a heavy Ne-H{sub 2} mixture and exposed to the Quadrupole Triplet neutrino beam produced by 800 GeV protons from the Tevatron. The average beam energy was 86 GeV. In a sample of 330000 frames, 1032 two-prong {nu}{sub {mu}} + {bar {nu}}{sub {mu}} charged current interactions were selected. The goal of this study was to investigate the low Q{sup 2} high {nu} region where the hadron dominance model can be tested. In this model, the vector and axial-vector parts of the weak hadronic current are dominated by the {rho} and a{sub 1} mesons respectively. Moreover, the Partially Conserved Axial Current (PCAC) hypothesis can be tested by studying the coherent production of single pions.