Quasielastic Distributions For Transverse Kinematic Variables

Abstract

The MINERvA experiment, located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Illinois), is a detector designed to study neutrino-nuclear interactions. MINERvA has been instrumental in understanding how neutrinos interact with nuclei and its research has been used to better analyze data from oscillation experiments like MicroBooNE, DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) and NOvA (NuMi Off Axis v Appearance) and prepare for the future experiment DUNE. Though MINERvA has ended data collection this year, more analysis on the models of nuclear interaction happening in the nucleus is required. GENIE, a neutrino event generator, is one used to model such interactions. Upon reviewing special features in transverse kinematic distributions, the task, a flaw in a part of the model affecting nearly all interactions was found and fixed. In this study, a new GENIE simulation of a class of quasielastic neutrino events will be presented, along with results for the new transverse kinematic imbalance distributions. An approximate fix is proposed for already generated samples of simulated events.