Neutrino pion production off deuteron

¹ Dept. Physics and Astronomy, Univ. South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208,
² Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

^a e-mail: myhrer@physics.sc.edu
^b e-mail: saori@lanl.gov

Published online: 25 March 2016

Abstract

Experimental investigations of neutrino properties, using neutrino beams generated at accelerators facilities, necessitate a detailed and precise knowledge of neutrinonucleus reaction mechanisms. In the energy region of nuclear quasi-elastic scattering, pion-production reactions constitute an important background process. A theoretical understanding of these processes is then required in order to correctly determine the produced neutrino energy spectrum. In the first stage of our research project, we study neutrino induced pion-production off deuterons. The choice of the deuteron minimizes the complications of the nuclear dynamics associated with larger nuclear systems. We evaluate the pion-production reaction near threshold using heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory.