Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 63: 355-381
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-1113-0

Regular Article - Experimental Physics

A study of quasi-elastic muon neutrino and antineutrino scattering in the NOMAD experiment

¹ LAPP, Annecy, France
² Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD, USA
³ Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA, USA
⁴ Univ. of Calabria and INFN, Cosenza, Italy
⁵ Dortmund Univ., Dortmund, Germany
⁶ JINR, Dubna, Russia
⁷ Univ. of Florence and INFN, Florence, Italy
⁸ CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
⁹ University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
¹⁰ UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
¹¹ University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
¹² Inst. for Nuclear Research, INR, Moscow, Russia
¹³ Univ. of Padova and INFN, Padova, Italy
¹⁴ LPNHE, Univ. of Paris VI and VII, Paris, France
¹⁵ Univ. of Pavia and INFN, Pavia, Italy
¹⁶ Univ. of Pisa and INFN, Pisa, Italy
¹⁷ Roma Tre University and INFN, Rome, Italy
¹⁸ DAPNIA, CEA, Saclay, France
¹⁹ Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA
²⁰ Univ. of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
²¹ Univ. of Urbino, Urbino, and INFN, Florence, Italy
²² IFIC, Valencia, Spain
²³ Rudjer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
²⁴ ETH Zùrich, Zùrich, Switzerland
²⁵ Inst. for High Energy Physics, 142281, Protvino, Moscow Region, Russia

^* e-mail: Vladimir.Lyubushkin@cern.ch

Received: 19 January 2009
Revised: 17 July 2009
Published online: 21 August 2009

Abstract

We have studied the muon neutrino and antineutrino quasi-elastic (QEL) scattering reactions (ν _μ n→μ ⁻ p and ) using a set of experimental data collected by the NOMAD Collaboration. We have performed measurements of the cross-section of these processes on a nuclear target (mainly carbon) normalizing it to the total ν _μ ( ) charged-current cross section. The results for the flux-averaged QEL cross sections in the (anti)neutrino energy interval 3–100 GeV are and for neutrino and antineutrino, respectively. The axial mass parameter M _A was extracted from the measured quasi-elastic neutrino cross section. The corresponding result is M _A =1.05±0.02(stat)±0.06(syst) GeV. It is consistent with the axial mass values recalculated from the antineutrino cross section and extracted from the pure Q ² shape analysis of the high purity sample of ν _μ quasi-elastic 2-track events, but has smaller systematic error and should be quoted as the main result of this work. Our measured M _A is found to be in good agreement with the world average value obtained in previous deuterium filled bubble chamber experiments. The NOMAD measurement of M _A is lower than those recently published by K2K and MiniBooNE Collaborations. However, within the large errors quoted by these experiments on M _A , these results are compatible with the more precise NOMAD value.