Probing nuclear effects in neutrino induced pion production

Thesis

The discovery of neutrino oscillations has opened the door to searches for matter- antimatter asymmetries in the lepton sector. Current accelerator-based long- baseline neutrino oscillation experiments, like T2K and NOνA, probing this phenomenon are moving into the realm of high statistics but systematically limited measurements. As a result work in reducing the dominant uncertainties in neutrino oscillations has become crucial in developing our understanding of leptonic CP Violation.

One of the dominant uncertainties lies in our understanding of neutrino- nucleus interactions. These affect our ability to determine the selection efficiencies for the respective signal and backgrounds, and the reconstruction of the neutrino energy spectra. This is due to our limited knowledge of nuclear effects and has renewed interest in neutrino-nucleus scattering measurements.

This thesis presents work on a novel method of isolating nuclear effects which can be applied to isolate interactions on hydrogen. Using Double Transverse Momentum — a kinematic imbalance of the final state hadronic system transverse to the neutrino direction and muon momentum plane, phenomenological studies are performed into its ability to probe nuclear effects.

We assess the feasibility of isolating neutrino-interactions on hydrogen in composite nuclear targets using the T2K near detector, ND280. This work is extended on to the MINERνA Experiment where work is undertaken in order to understand the heavy nuclear background. The first differential δpTT cross section measurement for final states containing at least one proton and π0 using the MINERνA detector is reported.

Authors: Coplowe, D

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-norvgkeek
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford