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 ${\nu }_{\mu }$ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wideband beam spanning $2\le {\mathrm{E}}_{\nu }\le 20\mathrm{GeV}$. 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.

• Received 23 March 2022
• Revised 25 May 2022
• Accepted 21 June 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.021803

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Published by the American Physical Society