Measurement of Electron Neutrino Quasielastic and Quasielasticlike Scattering on Hydrocarbon at ⟨Eν⟩=3.6 GeV

The first direct measurement of electron neutrino quasielastic and quasielasticlike scattering on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region of incident neutrino energy has been carried out using the MINERvA detector in the NuMI beam at Fermilab. The flux-integrated differential cross sections in the electron production angle, electron energy, and Q² are presented. The ratio of the quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in Q² for ν_e with that of similarly selected ν_μ-induced events from the same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional treatments of charged-current ν_e interactions used by long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. The data are found to be consistent with lepton universality and are well described by the predictions of the neutrino event generator GENIE.