| The neutral current neutrino-nucleon elastic interaction nu N → nu N is a fundamental process of the weak interaction ideally suited for characterizing the structure of the nucleon neutral weak current. This process comprises ∼18% of neutrino events in the neutrino oscillation experiment, MiniBooNE, ranking it as the experiment's third largest process. Using ∼10% of MiniBooNE's available neutrino data, a sample of these events were identified and analyzed to determine the differential cross section as a function of the momentum transfer of the interaction, Q2. This is the first measurement of a differential cross section with MiniBooNE data. From this analysis, a value for the nucleon axial mass MA was extracted to be 1.34+/-0.25 GeV consistent with previous measurements. The integrated cross section for the Q2 range 0.189 → 1.13 GeV 2 was calculated to be (8.8 +/- 0.6(stat) +/- 0.2(syst)) x 10-40 cm 2. |
