Measurement of inclusive $\pi^0$ production in the Charged-Current Interactions of Neutrinos in a 1.3-GeV wide band beam

Abstract

In this paper we report on the measurement of the rate of inclusive $\pi^0$ production induced by charged-current neutrino interactions in a C$_8$H$_8$ target at a mean energy of 1.3 GeV in the K2K near detector. Out of a sample of 11,606 charged current neutrino interactions, we select 479 $\pi^0$ events with two reconstructed photons. We find that the cross section for the inclusive $\pi^0$ production relative to the charged-current quasi-elastic cross section is $$\frac{\sigma_{CC\pi^0}}{\sigma_{CCQE}}=0.426\pm0.032(stat.)\pm0.035(syst.)$$ The energy dependent cross section ratio is also measured. The results are consistent with previous experiments for exclusive channels on different targets.