First measurement of the muon neutrino charged current single pion production cross section on water with the T2K near detector

The T2K off-axis near detector, ND280, is used to make the first differential cross section measurements of muon neutrino charged current single positive pion production on a water target at energies ∼0.8 GeV. The differential measurements are presented as a function of the muon and pion kinematics, in the restricted phase space defined by pπ+>200 MeV/c, pμ>200 MeV/c, cos(θπ+)>0.3 and cos(θμ)>0.3. The total flux integrated νμ charged current single positive pion production cross section on water in the restricted phase space is measured to be ⟨σ⟩ϕ=4.25±0.48(stat)±1.56(syst)×10−40 cm2/nucleon. The total cross section is consistent with the NEUT prediction (5.03×10−40 cm2/nucleon) and 2σ lower than the GENIE prediction (7.68×10−40 cm2/nucleon). The differential cross sections are in good agreement with the NEUT generator. The GENIE simulation reproduces well the shapes of the distributions, but overestimates the overall cross section normalization.