Abstract
We investigate the "low-$\nu$" method (developed by the CCFR/NUTEV collaborations) to determine the neutrino flux in a wide band neutrino beam at very low energies, a region of interest to neutrino oscillations experiments. Events with low hadronic final state energy $\nu<\nu_{cut}$ (of 1, 2 and 5 GeV) were used by the MINOS collaboration to determine the neutrino flux in their measurements of neutrino ($\nu_\mu$) and antineutrino ($\nub_\mu$) total cross sections. The lowest $\nu_\mu$ energy for which the method was used in MINOS is 3.5 GeV, and the lowest $\nub_\mu$ energy is 6 GeV. At these energies, the cross sections are dominated by inelastic processes. We investigate the application of the method to determine the neutrino flux for $\nu_\mu$, $\nub_\mu$ energies as low as 0.7 GeV where the cross sections are dominated by quasielastic scattering and $\Delta$(1232) resonance production. We find that the method can be extended to low energies by using $\nu_{cut}$ values of 0.25 and 0.50 GeV, which is feasible in fully active neutrino detectors such as MINERvA.
Highlights
A detailed understanding of neutrino and antineutrino interaction cross sections for various final states is required for the generation neutrino oscillations experiments
In method 4, only the sum of the fluxes for neutrinos and antineutrinos can be measured. This is because calorimetric detectors such as MINERvA cannot determine the charge of final state electron in νμ + e → νμ + e events
Both methods 4 and 5 are statistically limited. In both methods, the total final state energy in the events is not fully reconstructed since there is a neutrino in the final state
Summary
A detailed understanding of neutrino (νμ) and antineutrino (νμ) interaction cross sections for various final states is required for the generation neutrino oscillations experiments. In method 4, only the sum of the fluxes for neutrinos and antineutrinos can be measured This is because calorimetric detectors such as MINERvA cannot determine the charge of final state electron in νμ + e → νμ + e events. In both methods, the total final state energy in the events is not fully reconstructed since there is a neutrino in the final state This places a limitation on the determination of the energy dependence of the neutrino and antineutrino fluxes. The “low-ν” method was used by the CCFR/NuTeV collaborations to measure the energy dependence of σν/E and σν /E for charged current interactions for energies higher than 30 GeV for an iron target. Neutrino interactions in this energy range are currently being studied at MINERvA
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