Cosmic ray background rejection with wire-cell LArTPC event reconstruction in the MicroBooNE detector

Journal article

For a large liquid-argon time-projection chamber (LArTPC) operating on or near the Earth's surface to detect neutrino interactions, the rejection of cosmogenic background is a critical and challenging task because of the large cosmic-ray flux and the long drift time of the time-projection chamber. We introduce a superior cosmic background rejection procedure based on the Wire-Cell three-dimensional (3D) event reconstruction for LArTPCs. From an initial 1:20 000 neutrino to cosmic-ray background ratio, we demonstrate these tools on data from the MicroBooNE experiment and create a high-performance generic neutrino event selection with a cosmic contamination of 14.9% (9.7%) for a visible energy region greater than O(200) MeV. The neutrino interaction selection efficiency is 80.4% and 87.6% for inclusive νμ charged-current and νe charged-current interactions, respectively. This significantly improved performance compared with existing reconstruction algorithms marks a major milestone toward reaching the scientific goals of LArTPC neutrino oscillation experiments operating near the Earth's surface.

Authors: Abratenko, P; Alrashed, M; An, R; Anthony, J; Asaadi, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Journal: Physical Review Applied
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 6
• Article number: 64071
• Publication date: 2021-06-29
• Acceptance date: 2021-03-26
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevApplied.15.064071
• EISSN: 2331-7019
• ISSN: 2331-7019
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR