Using Neutrinos as a Probe of the Strong Interaction

Neutrino scattering experiments have been studying QCD for over 30 years. From the Gargamelle experiments in the early 70’s, through the subsequent bubble chamber and electronic detector experiments in the 80’s and 90’s, neutrino scattering experiments have steadily accumulated increasing statistics and minimized their systematic errors. While the most recent study of QCD with neutrinos is from the TeVatron neutrino beam (the NuTeV experiment with results presented by Martin Tzanov at this Workshop), near‐future studies will shift to the Main Injector based NuMI facility also at Fermilab. The NuMI Facility at Fermilab provides an extremely intense beam of neutrinos making it an ideal place for high statistics (anti)neutrino‐nucleon/nucleus scattering experiments. The MINERvA experiment at Fermilab is a collaboration of elementary‐particle and nuclear physicists planning to use a fully active fine‐grained solid scintillator detector to measure absolute exclusive cross‐sections and nuclear effects in v ‐ A interactions as well as a systematic study of the resonance‐DIS transition region and DIS with an emphasis on the extraction of high‐x_Bj parton distribution functions. Further in the future an intense proton source, the Fermilab Proton Driver, will increase neutrino interaction rates by a further factor of 5 – 20.