First Measurement of the Muon Neutrino Charged Current Single Pion Production Cross Section on Water with the T2K Near Detector

Abstract

The T2K off-axis near detector, ND280, is used to make the first differential cross section measurements of muon neutrino charged current single positive pion production on a water target at energies ${\sim}0.8$ GeV. The differential measurements are presented as a function of muon and pion kinematics, in the restricted phase-space defined by $p_{π^+}>200$MeV/c, $p_{μ^-}>200$MeV/c, $\cos θ_{π^+}>0.3$ and $\cos θ_{μ^-}>0.3$. The total flux integrated $ν_μ$ charged current single positive pion production cross section on water in the restricted phase-space is measured to be $\langleσ\rangle_ϕ=4.25\pm0.48 (\mathrm{stat})\pm1.56 (\mathrm{syst})\times10^{-40} \mathrm{cm}^{2}/\mathrm{nucleon}$. The total cross section is consistent with the NEUT prediction ($5.03\times10^{-40} \mathrm{cm}^{2}/\mathrm{nucleon}$) and 2$σ$ lower than the GENIE prediction ($7.68\times10^{-40} \mathrm{cm}^{2}/\mathrm{nucleon}$). The differential cross sections are in good agreement with the NEUT generator. The GENIE simulation reproduces well the shapes of the distributions, but over-estimates the overall cross section normalization.