Study of quasielastic scattering using charged-current nu_mu-iron interactions in the MINOS Near Detector

Understand

Kinematic distributions from an inclusive sample of 1.41 x 10^6 charged-current nu_mu interactions on iron, obtained using the MINOS Near Detector exposed to a wide-band beam with peak flux at 3 GeV, are compared to a conventional treatment of neutrino scattering within a Fermi gas nucleus.

• Results are used to guide the selection of a subsample enriched in quasielastic nu_mu Fe interactions, containing an estimated 123,000 quasielastic events of incident energies 1 < E_nu < 8 GeV, with <E_nu> = 2.79 GeV.
• Four additional subsamples representing topological and kinematic sideband regions to quasielastic scattering are also selected for the purpose of evaluating backgrounds.
• Comparisons using subsample distributions in four-momentum transfer Q^2 show the Monte Carlo model to be inadequate at low Q^2.