Measurements of the electron neutrino-argon differential cross section without pions in the final state in MicroBooNE

TL;DR

This paper reports a new measurement of the electron neutrino-argon charged current differential cross section without pions, using the full MicroBooNE dataset, comparing results with various neutrino interaction models.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed differential cross sections in both lepton and hadronic kinematics for electron neutrino interactions on argon, highlighting areas of agreement and discrepancy with models.

Findings

Good agreement with models in lepton kinematics

Discrepancies in hadronic system modeling, especially proton angle

Provides comprehensive data for neutrino interaction modeling

Abstract

We present a new measurement of the electron neutrino charged current cross section on argon without pions in the final state. This measurement uses the full MicroBooNE Booster Neutrino Beam dataset of $1.3\times 10^{21}$ protons on target collected at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Events are considered both with and without protons above the kinetic energy visibility threshold. Differential cross sections are extracted in proton and electron kinematics, including energy and angle relative to the neutrino beam direction. The relationship between the hadronic and leptonic systems is explored through the angle between the proton and electron directions. The resulting cross sections are compared to a variety of available generator predictions using different models of neutrino interactions. We find good agreement with most models in lepton kinematics and some discrepancies in the hadronic system modeling, particularly in proton angle.