Measurement of three-dimensional inclusive muon-neutrino charged-current cross sections on argon with the MicroBooNE detector

• Main Authors: MicroBooNE Collaboration, Abratenko, P, Alterkait, O, Aldana, D. Andrade, Baller, B, Barr, G, Barrow, J, Berkman, S, Bhattacharya, M, Bishai, M, Blake, A, Bogart, B, Book, J. Y, Cerati, G, Chen, Y, Conrad, J. M, Detje, P, Devitt, A, Djurcic, Z, Dorrill, R, Duffy, K, Dytman, S, Eberly, B, Evans, J. J, Fine, R, Finnerud, O. G, Foppiani, N, Goodwin, O, Gramellini, E, Green, P, Gu, W, Guenette, R, Guzowski, P, Hagaman, L, Imani, Z, Jiang, L, Jwa, Y. J, Ketchum, W, Kreslo, I, Leibovitch, M. B, Lepetic, I, Li, J. -Y, Li, Y, Lin, K, Liu, H, Louis, W. C, Luo, X, Mariani, C, Marsden, D, Marshall, J, Martinez, N, Caicedo, D. A. Martinez, McConkey, N, Micallef, J, Mohayai, T, Mogan, A, Mooney, M, Moor, A. F, Lepin, L. Mora, Naples, D, Nayak, N, Pallat, N, Paolone, V, Papavassiliou, V, Parkinson, H, Pavlovic, Z, Piasetzky, E, Pophale, I, Qian, X, Raaf, J. L, Radeka, V, Rafique, A, Reggiani-Guzzo, M, Ren, L, Rochester, L, Rondon, J. Rodriguez, Rosenberg, M, von Rohr, C. Rudolph, Scanavini, G, Schukraft, A, Shi, J, Soderberg, M, Spitz, J, Stancari, M, Taniuchi, N, Terao, K, Torbunov, D, Totani, D, Toups, M, Tyler, J, Weber, M, Williams, Z, Wolbers, S, Wospakrik, M, Wresilo, K, Wu, W, Yandel, E, Yates, L. E, Zennamo, J, Zhang, C
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 12-07-2023
• Subjects: Physics - High Energy Physics - Experiment; Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2307.06413

We report the measurement of the differential cross section $d^{2}\sigma
(E_{\nu})/ d\cos(\theta_{\mu}) dP_{\mu}$ for inclusive muon-neutrino
charged-current scattering on argon. This measurement utilizes data from
6.4$\times10^{20}$ protons on target of exposure collected using the MicroBooNE
liquid argon time projection chamber located along the Fermilab Booster
Neutrino Beam with a mean neutrino energy of approximately 0.8~GeV. The mapping
from reconstructed kinematics to truth quantities, particularly from
reconstructed to true neutrino energy, is validated within uncertainties by
comparing the distribution of reconstructed hadronic energy in data to that of
the model prediction in different muon scattering angle bins after applying a
conditional constraint from the muon momentum distribution in data. The success
of this validation gives confidence that the missing energy in the MicroBooNE
detector is well-modeled within uncertainties in simulation, enabling the
unfolding to a three-dimensional measurement over muon momentum, muon
scattering angle, and neutrino energy. The unfolded measurement covers an
extensive phase space, providing a wealth of information useful for future
liquid argon time projection chamber experiments measuring neutrino
oscillations. Comparisons against a number of commonly used model predictions
are included and their performance in different parts of the available
phase-space is discussed.