Search for Neutrino-Induced Neutral Current $\Delta$ Radiative Decay in MicroBooNE and a First Test of the MiniBooNE Low Energy Excess Under a Single-Photon Hypothesis

Abstract

We report results from a search for neutrino-induced neutral current (NC) resonant $\Delta$(1232) baryon production followed by $\Delta$ radiative decay, with a $⟨0.8⟩$~GeV neutrino beam. Data corresponding to MicroBooNE's first three years of operations (6.80$\times$10${}^{20}$ protons on target) are used to select single-photon events with one or zero protons and without charged leptons in the final state ($1\gamma 1p$ and $1\gamma 0p$, respectively). The background is constrained via an in-situ high-purity measurement of NC ${\pi }^0$ events, made possible via dedicated $2\gamma 1p$ and $2\gamma 0p$ selections. A total of 16 and 153 events are observed for the $1\gamma 1p$ and $1\gamma 0p$ selections, respectively, compared to a constrained background prediction of $20.5\pm 3.65\text{(sys.)}$ and $145.1\pm 13.8\text{(sys.)}$ events. The data lead to a bound on an anomalous enhancement of the normalization of NC $\Delta$ radiative decay of less than $2.3$ times the predicted nominal rate for this process at the 90% confidence level (CL). The measurement disfavors a candidate photon interpretation of the MiniBooNE low-energy excess as a factor of $3.18$ times the nominal NC $\Delta$ radiative decay rate at the 94.8% CL, in favor of the nominal prediction, and represents a greater than $50$-fold improvement over the world's best limit on single-photon production in NC interactions in the sub-GeV neutrino energy range

7 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. New version post-publication in PRL containing new plot

References in corpus (3)

• Neutrino-Nucleon Cross-Section Model Tuning in GENIE v3
• Search for neutral-current induced single photon production at the ND280 near detector in T2K
• Virtual Compton Scattering measurements in the ${\gamma }^{\ast }N\to \Delta$ transition

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Event Generators for High-Energy Physics Experiments
• MicroBooNE and the ${\nu }_e$ Interpretation of the MiniBooNE Low-Energy Excess
• First constraints on light sterile neutrino oscillations from combined appearance and disappearance searches with the MicroBooNE detector
• Heavy neutral leptons below the kaon mass at hodoscopic detectors
• Search for an anomalous excess of charged-current quasi-elastic ${\nu }_e$ interactions with the MicroBooNE experiment using Deep-Learning-based reconstruction
• Minimal dark energy: key to sterile neutrino and Hubble constant tensions?
• ACHILLES: A novel event generator for electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Solutions to the MiniBooNE Anomaly from New Physics in Charged Meson Decays
• An Altarelli Cocktail for the MiniBooNE Anomaly?
• Testing electroweak scale seesaw models at $e^{-}\gamma$ and $\gamma \gamma$ colliders
• Addressing the Short-Baseline Neutrino Anomalies with Energy-Dependent Mixing Parameters
• The science and technology of liquid argon detectors
• Search for an Anomalous Production of Charged-Current ${\nu }_e$ Interactions Without Visible Pions Across Multiple Kinematic Observables in MicroBooNE
• Demonstration of new MeV-scale capabilities in large neutrino LArTPCs using ambient radiogenic and cosmogenic activity in MicroBooNE
• Inclusive Search for Anomalous Single-Photon Production in MicroBooNE
• Enhanced search for neutral current $\Delta$ radiative single-photon production in MicroBooNE
• Resonance Contributions to Radiative Corrections in Charged-Current Elastic (Anti)Neutrino-Nucleon Scattering at GeV Energies
• Finding BSM Needles in Electromagnetic Haystacks at DUNE
• Electron-antineutrino spectrum from precision measurements of ${}^{144}$Pr-decay
• Measurement of the differential cross section for neutral pion production in charged-current muon neutrino interactions on argon with the MicroBooNE detector