Measurement of Neutrino and Antineutrino Total Charged-Current Cross Sections on Carbon with MINERvA

Abstract

This thesis presents a measurement of charged-current inclusive cross sections of muon neutrino and antineutrino interaction on carbon, and antineutrino to neutrino cross section ratio, $r$, in the energy range 2 - 22 GeV, with data collected in the MINERvA experiment. The dataset corresponds to an exposure of 3.2$\times 10^{20}$ protons on target (POT) for neutrinos and 1.0$\times 10^{20}$ POT for antineutrinos. Measurement of neutrino and antineutrino charged-current inclusive cross sections provides essential constraints for future long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment at a few GeV energy range. Our measured antineutrino cross section has an uncertainty in the range 6.1\% - 10.5\% and is the most precise measurement below 6~GeV to date. The measured $r$ has an uncertainty of 5.0\% - 7.5\%. This is the first measurement below 6~GeV since Gargamelle in 1970s. The cross sections are measured as a function of neutrino energy by dividing the efficiency corrected charged-current sample with extracted fluxes. Fluxes are obtained using the low-$\nu$ method, which uses low hadronic energy subsamples of charged-current inclusive sample to extract flux. Measured cross sections show good agreement with the prediction of neutrino interaction models above 7 GeV, and are about 10\% below the model below 7 GeV. The measured $r$ agrees with the GENIE model over the whole energy region. The measured cross sections and $r$ are compared with world data.