Coherent single pion production by antineutrino charged current interactions and test of pcac

The cross section for coherent production of a single π− meson in charged current antineutrino interactions on neon nuclei has been measured in BEBC to be (175±25) 10−40 cm2/neon nucleus, averaged over the energy spectrum of the antineutrino wide band beam at the CERN SPS; this corresponds to (0.9±0.1) % of the total charged current\(\bar v_\mu \) cross section. The distributions of kinematical variables are in agreement with theoretical predictions based on the PCAC hypothesis and the meson dominance model; in particular, theQ 2 dependence is well described by a propagator containing a massm=(1.35±0.18) GeV. The absolute value of the cross section is also in agreement with the model. This analysis thus provides a test of the PCAC hypothesis in the antineutrino energy range 5–150 GeV.