Rights statement: © 2021 American Physical Society
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Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Measurement of the Flux-Averaged Inclusive Charged-Current Electron Neutrino and Antineutrino Cross Section on Argon using the NuMI Beam and the MicroBooNE Detector
AU - MicroBooNE Collaboration
AU - Abratenko, P.
AU - Alrashed, M.
AU - An, R.
AU - Anthony, J.
AU - Asaadi, J.
AU - Ashkenazi, A.
AU - Balasubramanian, S.
AU - Baller, B.
AU - Barnes, C.
AU - Barr, G.
AU - Basque, V.
AU - Bathe-Peters, L.
AU - Rodrigues, O. Benevides
AU - Berkman, S.
AU - Bhanderi, A.
AU - Bhat, A.
AU - Bishai, M.
AU - Blake, A.
AU - Bolton, T.
AU - Camilleri, L.
AU - Caratelli, D.
AU - Terrazas, I. Caro
AU - Fernandez, R. Castillo
AU - Cavanna, F.
AU - Cerati, G.
AU - Chen, Y.
AU - Church, E.
AU - Cianci, D.
AU - Conrad, J. M.
AU - Convery, M.
AU - Cooper-Troendle, L.
AU - Crespo-Anadon, J. I.
AU - Tutto, M. Del
AU - Dennis, S. R.
AU - Devitt, D.
AU - Diurba, R.
AU - Domine, L.
AU - Dorrill, R.
AU - Duffy, K.
AU - Dytman, S.
AU - Eberly, B.
AU - Ereditato, A.
AU - Sanchez, L. Escudero
AU - Evans, J. J.
AU - Aguirre, G. A. Fiorentini
AU - Fitzpatrick, R. S.
AU - Fleming, B. T.
AU - Nowak, J.
AU - Thorpe, C.
N1 - © 2021 American Physical Society
PY - 2021/9/1
Y1 - 2021/9/1
N2 - We present a measurement of the combined $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ flux-averaged charged-current inclusive cross section on argon using data from the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) at Fermilab. Using the off-axis flux from the NuMI beam, MicroBooNE has reconstructed 214 candidate $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ interactions with an estimated exposure of 2.4$\times10^{20}$ protons on target. Given the estimated purity of 38.6\%, this implies the observation of 80 $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ events in argon, the largest such sample to date. The analysis includes the first demonstration of a fully automated application of a dE/dx-based particle discrimination technique of electron and photon induced showers in a LArTPC neutrino detector. We measure the $\nu_e + \bar{\nu}_e$ flux-averaged charged-current total cross section to be ${6.84\pm\!1.51~\textrm{(stat.)}\pm\!2.33~\textrm{(sys.)}\!\times\!10^{-39}~\textrm{cm}^{2}/~\textrm{nucleon}}$, for neutrino energies above 250 MeV and an average neutrino flux energy of 905 MeV when this threshold is applied. The measurement is sensitive to neutrino events where the final state electron momentum is above 48 MeV/c, includes the entire angular phase space of the electron, and is in agreement with the theoretical predictions from \texttt{GENIE} and \texttt{NuWro}. This measurement is also the first demonstration of electron neutrino reconstruction in a surface LArTPC in the presence of cosmic ray backgrounds, which will be a crucial task for surface experiments like those that comprise the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program at Fermilab.
AB - We present a measurement of the combined $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ flux-averaged charged-current inclusive cross section on argon using data from the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) at Fermilab. Using the off-axis flux from the NuMI beam, MicroBooNE has reconstructed 214 candidate $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ interactions with an estimated exposure of 2.4$\times10^{20}$ protons on target. Given the estimated purity of 38.6\%, this implies the observation of 80 $\nu_e$ + $\bar{\nu}_e$ events in argon, the largest such sample to date. The analysis includes the first demonstration of a fully automated application of a dE/dx-based particle discrimination technique of electron and photon induced showers in a LArTPC neutrino detector. We measure the $\nu_e + \bar{\nu}_e$ flux-averaged charged-current total cross section to be ${6.84\pm\!1.51~\textrm{(stat.)}\pm\!2.33~\textrm{(sys.)}\!\times\!10^{-39}~\textrm{cm}^{2}/~\textrm{nucleon}}$, for neutrino energies above 250 MeV and an average neutrino flux energy of 905 MeV when this threshold is applied. The measurement is sensitive to neutrino events where the final state electron momentum is above 48 MeV/c, includes the entire angular phase space of the electron, and is in agreement with the theoretical predictions from \texttt{GENIE} and \texttt{NuWro}. This measurement is also the first demonstration of electron neutrino reconstruction in a surface LArTPC in the presence of cosmic ray backgrounds, which will be a crucial task for surface experiments like those that comprise the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program at Fermilab.
KW - hep-ex
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.104.052002
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.104.052002
M3 - Journal article
VL - 104
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
SN - 1550-7998
IS - 5
M1 - 052002
ER -