Muonless Events in ICAL at INO

TL;DR

This paper develops selection criteria to isolate electron neutrino charged current events in the ICAL detector at INO, achieving a purity of 55% to 70% by analyzing Monte Carlo simulated neutrino interactions.

Contribution

It introduces optimized selection cuts to enhance the purity of electron neutrino events in ICAL, expanding the detector's capabilities beyond muon neutrino detection.

Findings

Purity of ${ u}_e$ events can reach up to 70%.

Selection cuts effectively distinguish ${ u}_e$ CC events from background.

Method improves neutrino flavor identification in ICAL.

Abstract

The primary physics signal events in the ICAL at INO are the ${\nu}_{\mu}$ charged current (CC) interactions with a well defined muon track. Apart from these events, ICAL can also detect other types of neutrino interactions, i.e. the electron neutrino charged current interactions and the neutral current events. It is possible to have a dataset containing mostly ${\nu}_e$CC events, by imposing appropriate selection cuts on the events. The ${\nu}_{\mu}$ CC and the neutral current events form the background to these events. This study uses the Monte Carlo generated neutrino events, to design the necessary selection cuts to obtain a ${\nu}_e$ CC rich dataset. An optimized set of constraints are developed which balance the need for improving the purity of the sample and having a large enough event sample. Depending on the constraints used, one can obtain a neutrino data sample, with the purity of ${\nu}_e$ events varying between 55% to 70%.