νμ CC1π+ Events Produced in the T2K Beam at Super-Kamiokande

T2K is an experiment designed to make precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters. Neutrinos produced in the Japan Proton Accelerator Complex are sent 295 km across Japan to the far detector Super-Kamiokande. Charged current quasi-elastic neutrino interactions in which the neutrino produces a lepton and a nucleon are dominant at T2K beam energies, and these are the signal events used in the measurement of muon disappearance parameters θ₂₃ and ∆m²₃₂. The second most dominant neutrino interaction mode at T2K is the charged current single pion interaction (CC1π+) in which both a lepton and a charged pion are produced in addition to the nucleon. This thesis presents a method to identify charged pions and CC1π+ neutrino interactions at Super-Kamiokande. This is used to develop a selection method for muon neutrino CC1π+ interactions at Super-Kamiokande in the T2K beam. There are 93 events expected based on Monte Carlo predictions which would increase the number of muon neutrino events in the T2K analysis by 40%. Methods developed to evaluate the systematic errors associated with explicitly selecting charged pions at Super-Kamiokande for the first time are also discussed.Science, Faculty ofPhysics and Astronomy, Department ofGraduat