Precise Measurement of Dimuon Production Cross-Sections in muon neutrino Fe and muon antineutrino Fe Deep Inelastic Scattering at the Tevatron

Abstract

We present measurements of the semi-inclusive cross-sections for muon neutrino and muon antineutrino-nucleon deep inelastic scattering interactions with two oppositely charged muons in the final state. These events dominantly arise from production of a charm quark during the scattering process. The measurement was obtained from the analysis of 5102 muon neutrino-induced and 1458 muon antineutrino-induced events collected with the NuTeV detector exposed to a sign-selected beam at the Fermilab Tevatron. We also extract a cross-section measurement from a re-analysis of 5030 muon neutrino-induced and 1060 muon antineutrino-induced vents collected from the exposure of the same detector to a quad-triplet beam by the CCFR experiment. The results are combined to obtain the most statistically precise measurement of neutrino-induced dimuon production cross-sections to date. These measurements should be of broad use to phenomenologists interested in the dynamics of charm production, the strangeness content of the nucleon, and the CKM matrix element Vcd.