Particle Physics Seminar

The discovery of neutrino oscillations is one of the most exciting recent developments in particle physics. Current and future neutrino experiments are aiming to make precise measurements of the oscillation parameters. Improving our understanding of neutrino-nucleus cross sections is crucial to these precision studies of neutrino oscillations. Ineractions in the neutrino energy region around 1 GeV are particulary important because this is the region of the expected oscillation signal in many experiments, but the cross sections in this region are not very well-known. This energy region is complicated due to overlapping contributinos from quasi-elastic scatting, resonant single pion production, and deep ineleastic scattering. This dissertation describes a measurement of the cross section for resonant single charged pion production in charged-current muon neutrino interactions with a carbon target. The measurement was made using data collected by the K2K long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiemnt, which used a muon neutrino beam with a mean energy of 1.3 GeV. The results of this measurement are consistent with previous experiments and predictions based on a widely-accepted model.