Measurement of $K^{+}$ production in charged-current $\nu_{\mu}$ interactions

The MINERvA collaboration Marshall, C.M. ; Aliaga, L. ; Altinok, O. ; et al.
Phys.Rev.D 94 (2016) 012002, 2016.
Inspire Record 1446753 DOI 10.17182/hepdata.78539

Production of K^{+} mesons in charged-current \nu_{\mu} interactions on plastic scintillator (CH) is measured using MINERvA exposed to the low-energy NuMI beam at Fermilab. Timing information is used to isolate a sample of 885 charged-current events containing a stopping K^{+} which decays at rest. The differential cross section in K^{+} kinetic energy, d\sigma/dT_{K}, is observed to be relatively flat between 0 and 500 MeV. Its shape is in good agreement with the prediction by the \textsc{genie} neutrino event generator when final-state interactions are included, however the data rate is lower than the prediction by 15\%.

5 data tables

The predicted $\nu_\mu$ flux per POT for the data included in this analysis.

The differential cross section with respect to $K^+$ kinetic energy $T_{K}$ is given in units of $10^{-39}$ cm$^{2}$ per nucleon per GeV, as well as the total statistical and systematic uncertainties.

The covariance for the flux uncertainty.

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