First double-differential cross section measurement of neutral-current production in neutrino-argon scattering in the MicroBooNE detector

Preprint

We report the first double-differential cross section measurement of neutral-current neutral pion (NC) production in neutrino-argon scattering, as well as single-differential measurements of the same channel in terms of final states with and without protons. The kinematic variables of interest for these measurements are the  momentum and the  scattering angle with respect to the neutrino beam. A total of 4971 candidate NC events fully-contained within the MicroBooNE detector are selected using data collected at a mean neutrino energy of ~GeV from  protons on target from the Booster Neutrino Beam at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. After extensive data-driven model validation to ensure unbiased unfolding, the Wiener-SVD method is used to extract nominal flux-averaged cross sections. The results are compared to predictions from commonly used neutrino event generators, which tend to overpredict the measured NC cross section, especially in the 0.2-0.5~GeV/c  momentum range and at forward scattering angles. Events with at least one proton present in the final state are also underestimated. This data will help improve the modeling of NC production, which represents a major background in measurements of charge-parity violation in the neutrino sector and in searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Authors: MicroBooNE; Abratenko, P; Alterkait, O; Aldana, DA; Arellano, L

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Not peer reviewed
• Preprint server: arXiv
• Publication date: 2025-03-31
• DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2404.10948
• Language: English