First Measurement of Energy-Dependent Inclusive Muon Neutrino Charged-Current Cross Sections on Argon with the MicroBooNE Detector

Abstract

We report a measurement of the energy-dependent total charged-current cross section $\sigma \left(E_{\nu }\right)$ for inclusive muon neutrinos scattering on argon, as well as measurements of flux-averaged differential cross sections as a function of muon energy and hadronic energy transfer ($\nu$). Data corresponding to 5.3$\times$10${}^{19}$ protons on target of exposure were collected using the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber located in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam with a mean neutrino energy of approximately 0.8 GeV. The mapping between the true neutrino energy $E_{\nu }$ and reconstructed neutrino energy $E_{\nu }^{rec}$ and between the energy transfer $\nu$ and reconstructed hadronic energy $E_{had}^{rec}$ are validated by comparing the data and Monte Carlo (MC) predictions. In particular, the modeling of the missing hadronic energy and its associated uncertainties are verified by a new method that compares the $E_{had}^{rec}$ distributions between data and an MC prediction after constraining the reconstructed muon kinematic distributions, energy and polar angle, to those of data. The success of this validation gives confidence that the missing energy in the MicroBooNE detector is well-modeled and underpins first-time measurements of both the total cross section $\sigma \left(E_{\nu }\right)$ and the differential cross section $d\sigma /d\nu$ on argon.

9 pages, 3 figures, 1 supplemental material, 3 data files

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• New CC0π GENIE Model Tune for MicroBooNE
• Multi-Differential Cross Section Measurements of Muon-Neutrino-Argon Quasielastic-like Reactions with the MicroBooNE Detector
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• First double-differential measurement of kinematic imbalance in neutrino interactions with the MicroBooNE detector
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• First simultaneous measurement of differential muon-neutrino charged-current cross sections on argon for final states with and without protons using MicroBooNE data
• Investigation of the MicroBooNE neutrino cross sections on Argon
• In-medium changes of nucleon cross sections tested in neutrino-induced reactions
• First study of neutrino angle reconstruction using quasielastic-like interactions in MicroBooNE
• Data-driven model validation for neutrino-nucleus cross section measurements
• Nuclear medium effects in lepton-nucleus DIS in the region of $x\gtrsim 1$
• Phase space of electron- and muon-neutrino and antineutrino scattering off nuclei
• Towards a Unified Model of Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions
• Measurement of the differential cross section for neutral pion production in charged-current muon neutrino interactions on argon with the MicroBooNE detector
• Improving Neutrino-Nuclei Interaction Models: Recommendations and Case Studies on Peelle's Pertinent Puzzle
• Towards mono-energetic virtual $\nu$ beam cross-section measurements: A feasibility study of $\nu$-Ar interaction analysis with DUNE-PRISM