Demonstration of neutron identification in neutrino interactions in the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber

Journal Article · 14 October 2024 · The European Physical Journal C

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-024-13423-z · OSTI ID:2477646

Abratenko, P. ^[1]; Alterkait, O.; Aldana, D. Andrade; Arellano, L.; Asaadi, J.; Ashkenazi, A.; Balasubramanian, S.; Baller, B.; Barnard, A.; Barr, G.; Barrow, D.; Barrow, J.; Basque, V.; Bateman, J.; Rodrigues, O. Benevides; Berkman, S.; Bhanderi, A.; Bhat, A.; Bhattacharya, M.; Bishai, M. ; Blake, A.; Bogart, B.; Bolton, T.; Book, J. Y.; Brunetti, M. B.; Camilleri, L.; Cao, Y.; Caratelli, D.; Cavanna, F.; Cerati, G.; Chappell, A.; Chen, Y.; Conrad, J. M.; Convery, M.; Cooper-Troendle, L.; Crespo-Anadón, J. I.; Cross, R.; Del Tutto, M.; Dennis, S. R.; Detje, P.; Diurba, R.; Djurcic, Z.; Dorrill, R.; Duffy, K.; Dytman, S.; Eberly, B.; Englezos, P.; Ereditato, A.; Evans, J. J.; Fine, R.; Foreman, W.; Fleming, B. T.; Franco, D.; Furmanski, A. P. ; Gao, F.; Garcia-Gamez, D.; Gardiner, S.; Ge, G.; Gollapinni, S.; Gramellini, E.; Green, P.; Greenlee, H.; Gu, L.; Gu, W.; Guenette, R.; Guzowski, P.; Hagaman, L.; Handley, M. D.; Hen, O.; Hilgenberg, C.; Horton-Smith, G. A.; Imani, Z.; Irwin, B.; Ismail, M. S.; James, C.; Ji, X.; Jo, J. H.; Johnson, R. A.; Jwa, Y.-J.; Kalra, D.; Kamp, N.; Karagiorgi, G.; Ketchum, W.; Kirby, M.; Kobilarcik, T.; Kreslo, I.; Lane, N.; Li, J.-Y.; Li, Y.; Lin, K.; Littlejohn, B. R.; Liu, H.; Louis, W. C.; Luo, X.; Mariani, C.; Marsden, D.; Marshall, J.; Martinez, N.; Caicedo, D. A. Martinez; Martynenko, S.; Mastbaum, A.; Mawby, I.; McConkey, N.; Meddage, V.; Mendez, J.; Micallef, J.; Miller, K.; Mogan, A.; Mohayai, T.; Mooney, M.; Moor, A. F.; Moore, C. D.; Lepin, L. Mora; Moudgalya, M. M.; Mulleriababu, S.; Naples, D.; Navrer-Agasson, A.; Nayak, N.; Nebot-Guinot, M.; Nguyen, C.; Nowak, J.; Oza, N.; Palamara, O.; Pallat, N.; Paolone, V.; Papadopoulou, A.; Papavassiliou, V.; Parkinson, H. B.; Pate, S. F.; Patel, N.; Pavlovic, Z.; Piasetzky, E.; Pletcher, K.; Pophale, I.; Qian, X.; Raaf, J. L.; Radeka, V.; Rafique, A. ; Reggiani-Guzzo, M.; Ren, L.; Rochester, L.; Rondon, J. Rodriguez; Rosenberg, M.; Ross-Lonergan, M.; Safa, I.; Schmitz, D. W.; Schukraft, A.; Seligman, W.; Shaevitz, M. H.; Sharankova, R.; Shi, J.; Snider, E. L.; Soderberg, M.; Söldner-Rembold, S.; Spitz, J.; Stancari, M.; John, J. St.; Strauss, T.; Szelc, A. M.; Tang, W.; Taniuchi, N.; Terao, K.; Thorpe, C.; Torbunov, D.; Totani, D.; Toups, M.; Trettin, A.; Tsai, Y.-T.; Tyler, J.; Uchida, M. A.; Usher, T.; Viren, B.; Wang, J.; Weber, M.; Wei, H.; White, A. J.; Wolbers, S.; Wongjirad, T.; Wospakrik, M.; Wresilo, K.; Wu, W.; Yandel, E.; Yang, T.; Yates, L. E.; Yu, H. W.; Zeller, G. P.; Zennamo, J.; Zhang, C.

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1. Tufts Univ., Medford, MA (United States); MicroBooNE Collaboration. et al.

A significant challenge in measurements of neutrino oscillations is reconstructing the incoming neutrino energies. While modern fully-active tracking calorimeters such as liquid argon time projection chambers in principle allow the measurement of all final state particles above some detection threshold, undetected neutrons remain a considerable source of missing energy with little to no data constraining their production rates and kinematics. We present the first demonstration of tagging neutrino-induced neutrons in liquid argon time projection chambers using secondary protons emitted from neutron-argon interactions in the MicroBooNE detector. We describe the method developed to identify neutrino-induced neutrons and demonstrate its performance using neutrons produced in muon-neutrino charged current interactions. The method is validated using a small subset of MicroBooNE’s total dataset. The selection yields a sample with 60% of selected tracks corresponding to neutron-induced secondary protons. At this purity, the integrated efficiency is 8.4% for neutrons that produce a detectable proton.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359; 89243024CSC000002
• OSTI ID: 2477646
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-PUB--24-0301; oai:inspirehep.net:2799227; arXiv:2406.10583
• Journal Information: The European Physical Journal C, Journal Name: The European Physical Journal C Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 84; ISSN 1434-6052
• Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLCCopyright Statement
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English