Nuclear medium effects in muonic neutrino interactions with energies from 0.2 to 1.5 GeV

Nuclear reactions induced by muon neutrinos with energies from 0.2 to 1.5 GeV in the Monte Carlo calculation framework in the intranuclear cascade model are studied. This study was done by comparing the available experimental data and theoretical values of total cross section, and the energy distribution of emitted lepton energy in the reaction muon neutrino nucleus, using the targets ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}, {}^{16}\mathrm{O}, {}^{27}\mathrm{Al}, {}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}, {}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}$, and ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$. A phenomenological model of primary neutrino-nucleon interaction gives good agreement between our theoretical inclusive neutrino nucleus cross section and the available experimental data. Some interesting results on the behavior of the cross section as function of $1p-1n$ and higher contributions are also sketched. The previous results on the fraction of fake events in available experiments in ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ were expanded for the set of studied nuclei. With the increase of mass targets, the nuclear effects in the cross sections were observed and the importance of taking into account fake events in the reactions was noted.

Figure 1

Best fitted results of KM for the ${\nu }_{\mu }$-deuterium cross section compared with experimental data from Refs. [37, 38]. The reactions are labeled in each panel.

Figure 2

${\nu }_{\mu }-A$ cross sections (as indicated in each figure) for all true-type channels studied as function of neutrino energy for all nuclei: long dash-dotted brown line, ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$; solid black line,${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$; dash-dotted magenta line, ${}^{27}\mathrm{Al}$; dash-dotted blue line, ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$; dotted green line, ${}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}$; and dotted red line, ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$.

Figure 3

${\nu }_{\mu }-{}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ cross section within KM model according true-type (solid line) and like-type (dashed line) events for ${\nu }_{\mu }+n\to {\mu }^{-}+p$ channel. The experimental data for true-type (filled squares) [9] and like-type (hole squares) [11] are shown for comparison.

Figure 4

Inclusive muon neutrino-nucleus cross-section ratios relative to ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}, \mathcal{R}={\sigma }_X/{\sigma }_{12C}$, for different channels (as indicated in each figure) as function of neutrino energy: solid black line,${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$; solid magenta line, ${}^{27}\mathrm{Al}$; dotted green line, ${}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}$; dash-dotted blue line, ${}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$; and dotted red line, ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$. Left panels: true-type events. Right panels: like-type events.

Figure 5

Partial contributions from some final-state configurations to the like-type cross section for ${}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}$ and ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ in the CCqe channel (left panel) and the CCres channel (right panel). We show the following contributions: added like-type (dashed red line), $1p+1n$ (dotted green line), $2p+1n$ (dash-dotted brown line), $1p+2n$ (long-dashed blue line), $2p+2n$ (dash-dotted magenta line), and finally the true-type (solid black line).

Figure 6

Fraction of false events, $R_c\left(i\right)$, according to Eq. (18) as function of neutrino energy for CCqe channels for the studied target nuclei: ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}, {}^{16}\mathrm{O}, {}^{27}\mathrm{Al}, {}^{40}\mathrm{Ar}, {}^{56}\mathrm{Fe}$, and ${}^{208}\mathrm{Pb}$.

Figure 7

Energy distribution for (a) ${\pi }^{+}$ and (b) ${\mu }^{-}$, for reaction induced with ${\nu }_{\mu }$ with the energy of $\sim 1$ GeV on ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$. Experimental data (black cross) of MiniBooNE [10, 11] are also shown for comparison. The error bars in the theoretical calculations are statistical due the propagation of error in the Monte Carlo and from the deviation in the neutrino flux.