Abstract
This article presents a measurement of νe interactions without pions in the final state using the MicroBooNE experiment and an investigation into the excess of low-energy electromagnetic events observed by the MiniBooNE Collaboration. The measurement is performed in exclusive channels with (1eNp0π) and without (1e0p0π) visible final-state protons using 6.86×1020 protons on target of data collected from the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab. Events are reconstructed with the Pandora pattern recognition toolkit and selected using additional topological information from the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber. Using a goodness-of-fit test, the data are found to be consistent with the predicted number of events with nominal flux and interaction models with a p value of 0.098 in the two channels combined. A model based on the low-energy excess observed in MiniBooNE is introduced to quantify the strength of a possible νe excess. The analysis suggests that, if an excess is present, it is not consistent with a scaling of the νe contribution to the flux as predicted by the signal model used in the analysis. Combined, the 1eNp0π and 1e0p0π channels do not give a conclusive indication about the tested model, but separately, they both disfavor the low-energy excess model at >90% C.L. The observation in the most sensitive 1eNp0π channel is below the prediction and consistent with no excess. In the less sensitive 1e0p0π channel, the observation at low energy is above the prediction, while overall there is agreement over the full energy spectrum.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 112004 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 105 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This document was prepared by the MicroBooNE Collaboration using the resources of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, HEP User Facility. Fermilab is managed by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC (FRA), acting under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359. MicroBooNE is supported by the following: the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Offices of High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics; the U.S. National Science Foundation; the Swiss National Science Foundation; the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of the United Kingdom Research and Innovation; the Royal Society (United Kingdom); and The European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. Additional support for the laser calibration system and cosmic ray tagger was provided by the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, Bern, Switzerland. We also acknowledge the contributions of technical and scientific staff to the design, construction, and operation of the MicroBooNE detector as well as the contributions of past collaborators to the development of MicroBooNE analyses, without whom this work would not have been possible.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.