Conclusions

Abstract

We have presented MINERvA’s first double-differential cross section for antineutrino scattering, and its first quasi-elastic-like antineutrino scattering cross section. We studied scattering of muon antineutrinos on doped polystyrene scintillator, producing a double-differential flux-integrated cross section in the muon transverse and longitudinal momentum d 2 σ/dp T dp ∥. We introduced a novel quasi-elastic-like definition, where our signal was a positive muon in the final state, along with any number of neutrons and any number of protons with less than 120 MeV of kinetic energy. We also produced an energy-dependent cross section $$d\sigma (E_\nu )/dQ^2_{QE}$$ . By projecting these double-differential cross sections, we also generated the flux-integrated single-differential cross sections dσ/dp T , dσ/dp ∥ and $$d\sigma /dQ^2_{QE}$$ . Additionally, we calculated the total scattering cross section σ(E ν ) as a function of neutrino energy. A comparison with different generator’s models showed better agreement with the GENIE generator than with NuWro, indicating that GENIE’s prediction of the spectrum of nucleons produced by final-state interactions agrees better with our data than does the rather different prediction from NuWro. An excess of data over GENIE suggests that additional nuclear 2-particle-2-hole effects such as meson exchange currents may be present. An upcoming version of GENIE will allow us to model several different nuclear effects and extensions to the Fermi Gas model and test these against our data.