Investigation of the MicroBooNE neutrino cross sections on Argon

TL;DR

This paper compares recent experimental neutrino cross section data on argon with a theoretical model, highlighting areas of agreement and discrepancies due to missing reaction channels, and emphasizes the new data's role in understanding reaction mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a comparison of recent MicroBooNE neutrino cross section data with a theoretical approach, incorporating energy transfer data for better reaction mechanism analysis.

Findings

Overall agreement with data, despite some underestimations.

Energy transfer data improves understanding of reaction mechanisms.

Discrepancies linked to missing inelastic channels like two-pion production.

Abstract

Experimental data of charged current inclusive neutrino cross sections on argon as a function of different variables have recently appeared. We have compared them to our theoretical approach. Overall we find an agreement in spite of a tendency of underestimation in some specific regions. A new aspect is the availability of data in terms of the energy transfer to the nucleus, which allows a better separation of the different reaction mechanisms. We explain the deterioration of agreement in specific kinematical conditions by the absence in our model of two-pion production and other inelastic channels, more important for MicroBooNE than for T2K.