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This has been a very active time for the MINERvA experiment. It has received construction approval and funding and is on track for installation in the NuMI beam in 2009. Much R&D work has been completed. This poster presents an update on the results from the recent R&D and prototyping work, the full experiment construction, and preparations for hadron and electron test beam calibrations of the detector components. The poster also describes the main physics goals and expected event rates for the experiment.

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) cross section on nuclei is an important input parameter for electron neutrino appearance oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically begin with the muon neutrino cross section and apply theoretical corrections to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross section. However, at present no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments exists. We present the cross sections for a CCQE-like process determined using the MINERvA detector, which are the first measurements of any exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions. The result is given as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and square of the four-momentum transferred to the nucleus, \\(Q^{2}\\). We also compute the ratio to a muon neutrino cross-section in \\(Q^{2}\\) from MINERvA. We find satisfactory agreement between these measurements and the predictions of the GENIE generator. We furthermore report on a photon-like background unpredicted by the generator which we interpret as neutral-coherent diffractive scattering from hydrogen.

Neutrino interaction events in the MINERvA detector are visually represented with a web-based tool called Arachne. Data are retrieved from a central server via AJAX, and client-side JavaScript draws images into the user's browser window using the draft HTML 5 standard. These technologies allow neutrino interactions to be viewed by anyone with a web browser, allowing for easy hand-scanning of particle interactions. Arachne has been used in MINERvA to evaluate neutrino data in a prototype detector, to tune reconstruction algorithms, and for public outreach and education.

We study neutrino-induced charged-current (CC) \\(\\pi^0\\) production on carbon nuclei using events with fully imaged final-state proton-\\(\\pi^0\\) systems. Novel use of final-state correlations based on transverse kinematic imbalance enable the first measurements of the struck nucleon's Fermi motion, of the intranuclear momentum transfer (IMT) dynamics, and of the final-state hadronic momentum configuration in neutrino pion production. Event distributions are presented for i) the momenta of neutrino-struck neutrons below the Fermi surface, ii) the direction of missing transverse momentum characterizing the strength of IMT, and iii) proton-pion momentum imbalance with respect to the lepton scattering plane. The observed Fermi motion and IMT strength are compared to the previous MINERvA measurement of neutrino CC quasielastic-like production. The measured shapes and absolute rates of these distributions, as well as the cross-section asymmetries show tensions with predictions from current neutrino generator models.

Accelerator based neutrino oscillation experiments seek to measure the relative number of electron and muon neutrinos and antineutrinos at different \\(L/E\\) values. However high statistics studies of neutrino interactions are almost exclusively measured using muon neutrinos and antineutrinos since the dominant flavor of neutrinos produced by accelerator based beams are of the muon type. This work reports new measurements of electron neutrino and antineutrino interactions in hydrocarbon, obtained by strongly suppressing backgrounds initiated by muon flavor neutrinos and antineutrinos. Double differential cross sections as a function of visible energy transfer, \\(E_\\text{avail}\\), and transverse momentum transfer, \\(p_T\\), or three momentum transfer, \\(q_3\\) are presented.

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) cross section on nuclei is an important input parameter to appearance-type neutrino oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically work from the muon neutrino cross section and apply corrections from theoretical arguments to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross section, but to date there has been no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments. We present the first measurement of an exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions, namely, the cross section for a CCQE-like process, made using the MINERvA detector. The result is given as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and square of the four-momentum transferred to the nucleus, \\(Q^2\\). We also compute the ratio to a muon neutrino cross-section in \\(Q^2\\) from MINERvA. We find satisfactory agreement between this measurement and the predictions of the GENIE generator.

This paper presents the first simultaneous measurement of the quasielastic-like neutrino-nucleus cross sections on C, water, Fe, Pb and scintillator (hydrocarbon or CH) as a function of longitudinal and transverse muon momentum. The ratio of cross sections per nucleon between Pb and CH is always above unity and has a characteristic shape as a function of transverse muon momentum that evolves slowly as a function of longitudinal muon momentum. The ratio is constant versus longitudinal momentum within uncertainties above a longitudinal momentum of 4.5GeV/c. The cross section ratios to CH for C, water, and Fe remain roughly constant with increasing longitudinal momentum, and the ratios between water or C to CH do not have any significant deviation from unity. Both the overall cross section level and the shape for Pb and Fe as a function of transverse muon momentum are not reproduced by current neutrino event generators. These measurements provide a direct test of nuclear effects in quasielastic-like interactions, which are major contributors to long-baseline neutrino oscillation data samples.

The electron-neutrino charged-current quasi-elastic (CCQE) cross-section on nuclei is an important input parameter to appearance-type neutrino oscillation experiments. Current experiments typically work from the muon neutrino cross-section and apply corrections from theoretical arguments to obtain a prediction for the electron neutrino cross-section, but to date there has been no experimental verification of the estimates for this channel at an energy scale appropriate to such experiments. We present a preliminary result from the MINERvA experiment on the first measurement of an exclusive reaction in few-GeV electron neutrino interactions, namely, the cross-section for a CCQE-like process. The result is given both as differential cross-sections vs. the electron energy, electron angle, and \\(Q^{2}\\), as well as a total cross-section vs. neutrino energy.

Among the most important tasks of neutrino oscillation experiments is correctly estimating the parent neutrino energy from the by-products of their interactions. Large uncertainties in our current understanding of such processes can significantly hamper this effort. We explore several recent measurements made using the \\mnv{} detector in the few-GeV NuMI muon neutrino beam at Fermilab: the differential cross-section vs. \\(Q^2\\) for charged-current quasi-elastic scattering, the differential cross-sections vs. pion angle and pion kinetic energy for resonant single charged pion production, and the differential cross-sections vs. pion angle and kinetic energy for coherent pion production. We furthermore discuss their implications for energy reconstruction in oscillation measurements.

Kinematic imbalance of the final-state particles in the plane transverse to the neutrino direction provides a sensitive probe of nuclear effects. In this contribution, we report the MINERvA measurement of the single-transverse kinematic imbalance in neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like events on CH targets. To improve the momentum measurements of the final-state particles, we develop a method to select elastically scattering contained (ESC) protons and a general procedure to correct the transverse momentum scales.