Lu Ren

OEH 302 Desk#2
lur3@pitt.edu
(412) 624-6245

Research

Measurement of Neutrino and Antineutrino Total Charged-current Cross Sections with MINERvA

This thesis presents a measurement of charged-current inclusive cross sections of muon neutrino and antineutrino interaction on carbon, and antineutrino to neutrino cross sectin ratio, $r$, in the energy range 2 - 22 GeV, with data collected in the MINERvA experiment. The dataset corresponds to $2.2\times 10^{20}$ protons on target for neutrinos and $1.0\times 10^{20}$ protons on target for antineutrinos.

Measurement of neutrino and antineutrino charged-current inclusive cross sections provides essential constraints for future long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment at a few GeV energy range. Our measured antineutrino cross section has an uncertainty of 7% - 10%.  It is the most precise measurement below 5 GeV to date. The measured $r$ has an uncertainty of 6% - 8%. This is the first measurement below 7 GeV since Gargamelle in 1970s.

The cross sections are measured as a function of neutrino energy by dividing the efficiency corrected charged-current sample with extracted fluxes. Fluxes are obtained using the \lownu{} method, which uses low hadronic energy subsamples of charged-current inclusive sample to extract flux. Measured cross sections show good agreement with the prediction of  neutrino interaction models above 7 GeV, and are about 10% below the model below 7 GeV. The measured $r$ agrees with model over the whole energy region. The measured cross sections and $r$ are compared with world data.

PhD