Study of charged hadron multiplicities in charged-current neutrino-lead interactions in the OPERA detector

Abstract: The OPERA experiment was designed to search for $\nu_{\mu} \rightarrow \nu_{\tau}$ oscillations in appearance mode through the direct observation of tau neutrinos in the CNGS neutrino beam. In this paper, we report a study of the multiplicity of charged particles produced in charged-current neutrino interactions in lead. We present charged hadron average multiplicities, their dispersion and investigate the KNO scaling in different kinematical regions. The results are presented in detail in the form of tables that can be used in the validation of Monte Carlo generators of neutrino-lead interactions.