Speaker
Description
Neutrino-induced coherent pion production is a significant background for
electron neutrino appearance and muon neutrino disappearance in neutrino
oscillation experiments. MINERvA has measured the cross sections of the charged
current channel simultaneously in hydrocarbon (CH), graphite (C), iron (Fe) and
lead (Pb), which exceed the model predictions at multi-GeV $\nu_{\mu}$ energies
and at produced pion energies greater than 1 GeV and angles less than 10
degrees. Measurements of the cross-section ratios of Fe and Pb relative to CH
reveal the effective A-scaling to increase with increasing neutrino energy,
evolving from an approximate A$^{1/3}$ scaling at few GeV to an approximate
A$^{2/3}$ scaling for neutrino energies greater than 10 GeV. Cross sections for
$Q^{2}$, $E_{\mu}$ and $\theta_{\mu}$ were also obtained.