A MEASUREMENT OF THE NEUTRAL CURRENT NEUTRINO-NUCLEON ELASTIC CROSS SECTION AT MINIBOONE

Abstract

The neutral current neutrino-nucleon elastic interaction ν N [arrow right] ν N is a fundamental process of the weak interaction ideally suited for characterizing the structure of the nucleon neutral weak current. This process comprises ∼18% of neutrino events in the neutrino oscillation experiment, MiniBooNE, ranking it as the experiment's third largest process. Using ∼10% of MiniBooNE's available neutrino data, a sample of these events were identified and analyzed to determine the differential cross section as a function of the momentum transfer of the interaction, Q 2 . This is the first measurement of a differential cross section with MiniBooNE data. From this analysis, a value for the nucleon axial mass M A was extracted to be 1.34±0.25 GeV consistent with previous measurements. The integrated cross section for the Q 2 range 0.189 [arrow right] 1.13 GeV 2 was calculated to be (8.8 ± 0.6( stat ) ± 0.2( syst )) × 10 -40 cm 2 .