Measurement of electron neutrino quasielastic and quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon at $\langle E_ν \rangle $ = 3.6 GeV

Abstract

The first direct measurement of electron-neutrino quasielastic and quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident neutrino energy has been carried out using the MINERvA detector in the NuMI beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in electron production angle, electron energy and $Q^{2}$ are presented. The ratio of the quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in $Q^{2}$ for $ν_{e}$ with that of similarly-selected $ν_μ$-induced events from the same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional treatments of charged-current $ν_{e}$ interactions used by long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with lepton universality and are well-described by the predictions of the neutrino event generator GENIE.

includes ancillary files with flux, measured cross sections, and covariance matrices (v9 includes tables of nu_e + antinu_e / nu_mu ratio and associated covariances)