Measurement of \nu_\mu and \bar\nu_\mu induced neutral current single $\pi^0$ production cross sections on mineral oil at E_\nu O(1 GeV)

Abstract

MiniBooNE reports the first absolute cross sections for neutral current single \pi^0 production on CH_2 induced by neutrino and antineutrino interactions measured from the largest sets of NC \pi^0 events collected to date. The principal result consists of differential cross sections measured as functions of \pi^0 momentum and \pi^0 angle averaged over the neutrino flux at MiniBooNE. We find total cross sections of (4.76+/-0.05_{stat}+/-0.76_{sys})*10^{-40} cm^2/nucleon at a mean energy of <E_\nu>=808 MeV and (1.48+/-0.05_{stat}+/-0.23_{sys})*10^{-40} cm^2/nucleon at a mean energy of <E_\nu>=664 MeV for \nu_\mu and \bar\nu_\mu induced production, respectively. In addition, we have included measurements of the neutrino and antineutrino total cross sections for incoherent exclusive NC 1\pi^0 production corrected for the effects of final state interactions to compare to prior results.