Measurements of the electron neutrino-argon differential cross section without pions in the final state in MicroBooNE

Abstract

We present a new measurement of the electron neutrino charged current cross section on argon without pions in the final state. This measurement uses the full MicroBooNE Booster Neutrino Beam dataset of $1.3\times 10^{21}$ protons on target collected at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Events are considered both with and without protons above the kinetic energy visibility threshold. Differential cross sections are extracted in proton and electron kinematics, including energy and angle relative to the neutrino beam direction. The relationship between the hadronic and leptonic systems is explored through the angle between the proton and electron directions. The resulting cross sections are compared to a variety of available generator predictions using different models of neutrino interactions. We find good agreement with most models in lepton kinematics and some discrepancies in the hadronic system modeling, particularly in proton angle.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: Event displays on the collection plane for two of the selected data events: (a) 1eNp0$\pi$ candidate event and (b) 1e0p0$\pi$ candidate event. The x-axis corresponds to wire number and the y-axis corresponds to time. The color scale indicates the amount of deposited charge.
• Figure 2: Predicted distribution and data in variables using the 1eNp0$\pi$ channel: (a) electron energy, (b) cosine of electron angle, (c) proton angle, (d) cosine of the electron-proton opening angle.
• Figure 3: Predicted distribution and data for proton kinetic energy for the 1eXp0$\pi$ channel (1eNp0$\pi$ + 1e0p0$\pi$). (a) shows this distribution with multiple bins for 1eNp0$\pi$ events, and (b) the same distribution with one bin per channel.
• Figure 4: Unfolded data compared to the set of models described in section \ref{['sec:models']}, for all analysis variables using the 1eNp0$\pi$ channel: (a) electron energy, (b) cosine of electron angle, (c) proton angle, (d) cosine of electron-proton opening angle.
• Figure 5: Unfolded data compared to the set of models described in section \ref{['sec:models']}, for proton kinetic energy for the 1eXp0$\pi$ channel. (a) shows this distribution with multiple bins for 1eNp0$\pi$ events, and (b) the same distribution with one bin per channel such that all 1eNp0$\pi$ events are in a single bin from 50 to 800 MeV.