Simultaneous Measurement of Proton and Lepton Kinematics in Quasielasticlike νμ-Hydrocarbon Interactions from 2 to 20 GeV

Neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering, a reaction category extensively used in neutrino oscillation measurements, probes nuclear effects that govern neutrino-nucleus interactions. This Letter reports the first measurement of the triple-differential cross section for <math display="inline"><msub><mi>ν</mi><mi>μ</mi></msub></math> quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wideband beam spanning <math display="inline"><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>≤</mo><msub><mrow><mi mathvariant="normal">E</mi></mrow><mrow><mi>ν</mi></mrow></msub><mo>≤</mo><mn>20</mn><mtext> </mtext><mtext> </mtext><mi>GeV</mi></mrow></math>. The measurement maps the correlations among transverse and longitudinal muon momenta and summed proton kinetic energies, and compares them to predictions from a state-of-art simulation. Discrepancies are observed that likely reflect shortfalls with modeling of pion and nucleon intranuclear scattering and/or spectator nucleon ejection from struck nuclei. The separate determination of leptonic and hadronic variables can inform experimental approaches to neutrino-energy estimation.