Measurement of the $M_A^{QE}$ parameter using multiple quasi-elastic dominated sub-samples in the minos near detector

Abstract

The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) is a two detector, long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment. The MINOS near detector is an ironscintillator tracking/sampling calorimeter and has recorded the world’s largest data set of neutrino interactions in the 0-5 GeV region. This high statistics data set is used to make precision measurements of neutrino interaction cross-sections on iron. The Q2 dependence in charged current quasi-elastic (CCQE) scattering probes the axial and vector structure (form factor) of the nucleon/nuclear target, and nuclear effects in neutrino scattering. Presented here is a study of the MINOS Data that will introduce a method that improves the existing MINOS CCQE analysis. This analysis uses an additional CCQE dominated sub-sample from a different kinematic region to reduce correlations between fit parameters in the existing MINOS CCQE analysis. The measured value of the axial-vector mass is MQE A = 1.312+0.037 -0.038(fit)+0.123 -0.265(syst.) GeV.