Benchmarking State-of-the-Art Theory and Empirical Models of Pionless Neutrino-Argon Scattering in GENIE

TL;DR

This paper evaluates various neutrino interaction models within the GENIE generator against recent MicroBooNE data, highlighting the flexibility of GENIE in testing different theoretical and empirical approaches for pionless neutrino-argon scattering.

Contribution

It systematically benchmarks and compares the performance of different GENIE models against experimental data, emphasizing the software's modularity for testing diverse interaction models.

Findings

GENIE's model components can be interchanged easily for testing.

Some sophisticated models are contrasted with empirical alternatives.

The study provides insights into model performance against MicroBooNE data.

Abstract

Upcoming experiments need improved simulations of neutrino scattering. This work uses the popular GENIE event generator to test a variety of neutrino interaction models against recent MicroBooNE measurements of pionless charged-current interactions. The GENIE code can easily interchange model components, including nucleon form factor parameterizations, quasielastic cross-section calculations, treatments of the nuclear ground state and hadronic final-state interactions. Leveraging this software capability in comparisons with MicroBooNE data, the performance of some of GENIE's most theoretically sophisticated model components is evaluated and contrasted with more empirically-driven alternatives.