Measurement of Muon Neutrino Quasielastic Scattering on a Hydrocarbon Target at Eν∼3.5GeV

We report a study of ν_μ charged-current quasielastic events in the segmented scintillator inner tracker of the MINERvA experiment running in the NuMI neutrino beam at Fermilab. The events were selected by requiring a μ^- and low calorimetric recoil energy separated from the interaction vertex. We measure the flux-averaged differential cross section, dσ/dQ², and study the low energy particle content of the final state. Deviations are found between the measured dσ/dQ² and the expectations of a model of independent nucleons in a relativistic Fermi gas. We also observe an excess of energy near the vertex consistent with multiple protons in the final state.