Neutrino cross sections with the MINERνA Experiment

MINERνA is a high resolution, fully active detector designed to study neutrino interactions on nuclei in the NuMI beam at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The active volume of the detector consists of 3 tons of plastic scintillator and includes embedded targets of 4He, C, H2O, Fe and Pb. The MINERνA collaboration expects to perform precision, A-dependent neutrino cross section measurements in the 1-10 GeV region, measure the axial form factor, and study nuclear shadowing of F2, quark-hadron duality and coherent pion production, among other topics. MINERνA began data taking in the fall of 2009. This paper describes the MINERνA experiment and provides an overview of the physics objectives along with estimated uncertainties of the measurements and the tentative projected schedule of data taking.