Benchmarking neutrino interaction models via a comparative analysis of kinematic imbalance measurements from the T2K, MicroBooNE and MINERvA experiments

Abstract

Recent neutrino-nucleus cross-section measurements of observables characterising kinematic imbalance from the T2K, MicroBooNE and MINERvA experiments are used to benchmark predictions from widely used neutrino interaction event generators. Given the different neutrino energy spectra and nuclear targets employed by the three experiments, comparisons of model predictions to their measurements breaks degeneracies that would be present in any single measurement. In particular, the comparison of T2K and MINERvA measurements offers a probe of energy dependence, whilst a comparison of T2K and MicroBooNE investigates scaling with nuclear target. In order to isolate the impact of individual nuclear effects, model comparisons are made following systematic alterations to: the nuclear ground state; final state interactions and multi-nucleon interaction strength. The measurements are further compared to the generators used as an input to DUNE/SBN and T2K/Hyper-K analyses. Whilst no model is able to quantitatively describe all the measurements, evidence is found for mis-modelling of A-scaling in multi-nucleon interactions and it is found that tight control over how energy is distributed among hadrons following final state interactions is likely to be crucial to achieving improved agreement. Overall, this work provides a novel characterisation of neutrino interactions whilst offering guidance for refining existing generator predictions.