Denys Wilkinson Building, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH
Dr Patrick Duffy, University of Oxford
Abstract
Precision measurements of neutrino oscillations will address some of the largest open questions in particle physics in the coming decades. A detailed understanding of neutrino–nucleus scattering is essential to allow the fundamental properties of neutrinos to be disentangled from the complex nuclear physics of neutrino interactions. It is also crucial to understand neutrino-induced backgrounds that limit the sensitivity of searches for new physics. Measurements of neutrino interactions on argon are especially urgent to enable the testing and improvement of models in preparation for the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).
MicroBooNE is an 85-ton Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) neutrino experiment that operated from 2015–2021. MicroBooNE was exposed to the BNB and NuMI neutrino beams at Fermilab, accumulating over 800k neutrino interactions.
The LArTPC detector technology enables low-threshold imaging of neutrino interactions with excellent spatial and timing resolution, enabling the precision measurement of complex final states resulting from neutrino-nucleus interactions.
This seminar will present MicroBooNE’s first measurements of neutrino-induced single charged pion production on argon in both charged-current muon-neutrino (νμ CC 1π±, arXiv:2509.03628) and electron-neutrino (νe CC 1π±, PRL 135 (2025) 6, 061802) interactions. These measurements utilise the full MicroBooNE 5-year BNB and NuMI datasets, respectively, for the first time. The νμ CC 1π± measurement provides a 25-times increase in the previously available data statistics on argon and the νe CC 1π± measurement is the first-ever measurement of this channel on argon. This interaction mode enables the modeling of neutrino-induced resonant pion production to be probed, which is one of the dominant interaction modes expected in DUNE. Together, these measurements provide critical and timely data to test and enable refinement of the modeling of this important interaction type.