Investigating the differences between electron and muon neutrino interactions using the T2K near detector

Abstract

The T2K neutrino beam consists mostly of muon neutrinos with a 1$\%$ component of electron neutrinos. In order to maximise the physics potential of T2K and other future neutrino experiments, it is important to understand how these electron and muon neutrinos interact. To this end, the ratio of the Charged-Current Quasi-Elastic (CCQE) cross section to the total Charged Current (CC) cross section is taken for both $ν_{e}$ and $ν_μ$ using data from the T2K near detector, ND280, and simulated data from NEUT and GENIE Monte Carlo generators. This has the advantage that many of the systematic uncertainties will cancel in the analysis, including the flux of $ν_{e}$ and $ν_μ$ in the beam. The double ratio of these two ratios is then taken as a means of directly comparing the interactions of the two neutrino flavours.

4 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings for a poster presented at NuPhys2014 conference