First measurement of the <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:msub><mml:mi>ν</mml:mi><mml:mi>μ</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:math> charged-current cross section on a water target without pions in the final state

Abstract

This paper reports the first differential measurement of the charged-current interaction cross section of ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\ensuremath{\mu}}$ on water with no pions in the final state. This flux-averaged measurement has been made using the T2K experiment's off-axis near detector, and is reported in doubly differential bins of muon momentum and angle. The flux-averaged total cross section in a restricted region of phase space was found to be $\ensuremath{\sigma}=(0.95\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.08(\text{stat})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.06(\text{det syst})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.04(\text{model syst})\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.08(\text{flux}))\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}38}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}/\mathrm{n}$.