Measurement of double-differential cross sections for mesonless charged-current muon neutrino interactions on argon with final-state protons using the MicroBooNE detector

TL;DR

This paper presents the first detailed double-differential cross section measurements for mesonless charged-current muon neutrino interactions on argon, providing crucial data for neutrino oscillation models and experiments.

Contribution

It reports novel double-differential cross sections and total cross section measurements for muon neutrino interactions on argon, with comprehensive uncertainty analysis and correlations.

Findings

First double-differential cross section measurements for this channel.

Total flux-averaged cross section of (11.8 ± 1.2) × 10^{-38} cm^2/Ar.

Enhanced data set for testing neutrino-argon scattering models.

Abstract

Charged-current neutrino interactions with final states containing zero mesons and at least one proton are of high interest for current and future accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments. Using the Booster Neutrino Beam and the MicroBooNE detector at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, we have obtained the first double-differential cross section measurements of this channel for muon neutrino scattering on an argon target with a proton momentum threshold of 0.25 GeV/c. We also report a flux-averaged total cross section of $\sigma = (11.8 \pm 1.2) \times 10^{-38}$ cm$^2$ / Ar and several single-differential measurements which extend and improve upon previous results. Statistical and systematic uncertainties are quantified with a full treatment of correlations across 359 kinematic bins, including correlations between distributions describing different observables. The resulting data set provides the most detailed information obtained to date for testing models of mesonless neutrino-argon scattering.