Measurement of Electron Neutrino Quasielastic and Quasielasticlike Scattering on Hydrocarbon at =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 ${Q}^{2}$ are presented. The ratio of the quasielastic, flux-integrated differential cross section in ${Q}^{2}$ for ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{e}$ with that of similarly selected ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{\ensuremath{\mu}}$-induced events from the same exposure is used to probe assumptions that underpin conventional treatments of charged-current ${\ensuremath{\nu}}_{e}$ 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.