Measurement of the longitudinal diffusion of ionization electrons in the MicroBooNE detector
Authors: Abratenko P. , An R. , Anthony J. , Asaadi J. , Ashkenazi A. , Balasubramanian S. , Baller B. , Barnes C. , Barr G. , Basque V. , Bathe-Peters L. , Benevides Rodrigues O. , Berkman S. , Bhanderi A. , Bhat A. , Bishai M. , Blake A. , Bolton T. , Camilleri L. , Caratelli D. , Caro Terrazas I. , Castillo Fernandez R. , Cavanna F. , Cerati G. , Chen Y. , Church E. , Cianci D. , Conrad J.M. , Convery M. , Cooper-Troendle L. , Crespo-Anadón J.I. , Del Tutto M. , Dennis S.R. , Devitt D. , Diurba R. , Dorrill R. , Duffy K. , Dytman S. , Eberly B. , Ereditato A. , Evans J.J. , Fine R. , Fiorentini Aguirre G.A. , Fitzpatrick R.S. , Fleming B.T. , Foppiani N. , Franco D. , Furmanski A.P. , Garcia-Gamez D. , Gardiner S. , Ge G. , Gollapinni S. , Goodwin O. , Gramellini E. , Green P. , Greenlee H. , Gu W. , Guenette R. , Guzowski P. , Hagaman L. , Hall E. , Hamilton P. , Hen O. , Horton-Smith G.A. , Hourlier A. , Itay R. , James C. , Ji X. , Jiang L. , Jo J.H. , Johnson R.A. , Jwa Y.-J. , Kamp N. , Kaneshige N. , Karagiorgi G. , Ketchum W. , Kirby M. , Kobilarcik T. , Kreslo I. , LaZur R. , Lepetic I. , Li K. , Li Y. , Lin K. , Lister A. , Littlejohn B.R. , Louis W.C. , Luo X. , Manivannan K. , Mariani C. , Marsden D. , Marshall J. , Martinez Caicedo D.A. , Mason K. , Mastbaum A. , McConkey N. , Meddage V. , Mettler T. , Miller K. , Mills J. , Mistry K. , Mogan A. , Mohayai T. , Moon J. , Mooney M. , Moor A.F. , Moore C.D. , Mora Lepin L. , Mousseau J. , Murphy M. , Naples D. , Navrer-Agasson A. , Neely R.K. , Nowak J. , Nunes M. , Palamara O. , Paolone V. , Papadopoulou A. , Papavassiliou V. , Pate S.F. , Paudel A. , Pavlovic Z. , Piasetzky E. , Ponce-Pinto I.D. , Prince S. , Qian X. , Raaf J.L. , Radeka V. , Rafique A. , Reggiani-Guzzo M. , Ren L. , Rice L.C.J. , Rochester L. , Rodriguez Rondon J. , Rogers H.E. , Rosenberg M. , Ross-Lonergan M. , Scanavini G. , Schmitz D.W. , Schukraft A. , Seligman W. , Shaevitz M.H. , Sharankova R. , Sinclair J. , Smith A. , Snider E.L. , Soderberg M. , Söldner-Rembold S. , Spentzouris P. , Spitz J. , Stancari M. , St. John J. , Strauss T. , Sutton K. , Sword-Fehlberg S. , Szelc A.M. , Tagg N. , Tang W. , Terao K. , Thorpe C. , Totani D. , Toups M. , Tsai Y.-T. , Uchida M.A. , Usher T. , Van De Pontseele W. , Viren B. , Weber M. , Wei H. , Williams Z. , Wolbers S. , Wongjirad T. , Wospakrik M. , Wright N. , Wu W. , Yandel E. , Yang T. , Yarbrough G. , Yates L.E. , Zeller G.P. , Zennamo J. , Zhang C. 
Published: September 2021

Accurate knowledge of electron transport properties is vital to understanding the information provided by liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs). Ionization electron drift-lifetime, local electric field distortions caused by positive ion accumulation, and electron diffusion can all significantly impact the measured signal waveforms. This paper presents a measurement of the effective longitudinal electron diffusion coefficient, DL, in MicroBooNE at the nominal electric field strength of 273.9 V/cm. Historically, this measurement has been made in LArTPC prototype detectors. This represents the first measurement in a large-scale (85 tonne active volume) LArTPC operating in a neutrino beam. This is the largest dataset ever used for this measurement. Using a sample of ∼70,000 through-going cosmic ray muon tracks tagged with MicroBooNE's cosmic ray tagger system, we measure DL = 3.74+0.28
-0.29 cm2/s.