Speaker
Description
Understanding neutrino and antineutrino deep inelastic scattering (DIS) on nuclei in the few tens of GeV and low-Q2 regime is essential for precision oscillation measurements. In this region, nuclear effects and parton-level dynamics influence both the final-state particle content and the reconstructed neutrino energy. Inaccurate modeling of these effects can introduce biases in oscillation parameter extraction, particularly for experiments operating at multi-GeV energies.
MINERvA is a high-statistics cross-section experiment designed to study neutrino interactions on multiple nuclear targets with neutrino energies <E_nu> ≈ 6 GeV and Q2 ≈< 4 GeV^2. I will present MINERvA’s first measurements of charged current DIS cross sections in both neutrino (FHC) and antineutrino (RHC) modes on carbon, hydrocarbon (CH), iron, and lead. The analysis explores nuclear dependence as a function of neutrino energy and Bjorken-x.
The results reveal tensions with current neutrino interaction models. The observed differences highlight the importance of accurately modeling nuclear modifications and parton-level dynamics in low E_nu neutrino DIS. Because the energy range and target materials overlap those relevant for DUNE and the higher-energy atmospheric neutrino experiments, these measurements provide important benchmarks for tuning neutrino interaction generators and improving the treatment of nuclear effects in future oscillation analyses.