Dr Sophie King (King's College London)

Long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments search for (anti)electron neutrino appearance in a (anti)muon neutrino beam. As such, electron neutrino interactions provide the signal for oscillation, as well as the largest irreducible background due to their intrinsic component of the beam. In particular, the ratio of muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillation, compared to that of antimuon neutrino to antielectron neutrino, allows us to probe CP-violation in the lepton sector. Consequently, our modelling of electron neutrino interactions in our event generators, and the associated systematic uncertainty, play a vital role in these measurements and need be tested and driven by data constraints. As the statistics collected by current experiments grow, and with the larger-scale next-generation experiments starting to take data later this decade, we begin to enter the era of systematic limited measurements and the uncertainty in electron neutrino interaction models become increasingly crucial to the sensitivity of these CP-violation searches.

This talk looks at the T2K experiment and the electron neutrino measurements conducted with the near detector, ND280. The selection process within the composite detector is explained, and the effect of systematic uncertainties is presented. A likelihood template fit is performed in order to fit the true signal predictions based on their contribution in reconstructed space in comparison to the data. The charged current inclusive electron antineutrino cross section measurement is the first to be performed since the 1970s and the results are compared to the widely used NEUT and GENIE neutrino interaction generators. Finally, prospects for future electron neutrino measurements are discussed.