Rejecting cosmic background for exclusive charged current quasi elastic neutrino interaction studies with Liquid Argon TPCs; a case study with the MicroBooNE detector
Authors: Adams C. , Alrashed M. , An R. , Anthony J. , Asaadi J. , Ashkenazi A. , Auger M. , Balasubramanian S. , Baller B. , Barnes C. , Barr G. , Bass M. , Bay F. , Bhat A. , Bhattacharya K. , Bishai M. , Blake A. , Bolton T. , Camilleri L. , Caratelli D. , Terrazas I. Caro , Carr R. , Fernandez R. Castillo , Cavanna F. , Cerati G. , Chen Y. , Church E. , Cianci D. , Cohen E. O. , Collin G. H. , Conrad J. M. , Convery M. , Cooper-Troendle L. , Crespo-Anadón J. I. , Del Tutto M. , Devitt A. , Diaz A. , Duffy K. , Dytman S. , Eberly B. , Ereditato A. , Sanchez L. Escudero , Esquivel J. , Evans J. J , Fadeeva A. A. , Fitzpatrick R. S. , Fleming B. T. , Franco D. , Furmanski A. P. , Garcia-Gamez D. , Genty V. , Goeldi D. , Gollapinni S. , Goodwin O. , Gramellini E. , Greenlee H. , Grosso R. , Guenette R. , Guzowski P. , Hackenburg A. , Hamilton P. , Hen O. , Hewes J. , Hill C. , Horton-Smith G. A. , Hourlier A. , Huang E.-C. , James C. , de Vries J. Jan , Ji X. , Jiang L. , Johnson R. A. , Joshi J. , Jostlein H. , Jwa Y.-J. , Karagiorgi G. , Ketchum W. , Kirby B. , Kirby M. , Kobilarcik T. , Kreslo I. , Lepetic I. , Li Y. , Lister A. , Littlejohn B. R. , Lockwitz S. , Lorca D. , Louis W. C. , Luethi M. , Lundberg B. , Luo X. , Marchionni A. , Marcocci S. , Mariani C. , Marshall J. , Martin-Albo J. , Caicedo D. A. Martinez , Mastbaum A. , Meddage V. , Mettler T. , Mistry K. , Mogan A. , Moon J. , Mooney M. , Moore C. D. , Mousseau J. , Murphy M. , Murrells R. , Naples D. , Nienaber P. , Nowak J. , Palamara O. , Pandey V. , Paolone V. , Papadopoulou A. , Papavassiliou V. , Pate S. F. , Pavlovic Z. , Piasetzky E. , Porzio D. , Pulliam G. , Qian X. , Raaf J. L. , Rafique A. , Ren L. , Rochester L. , Ross-Lonergan M. , von Rohr C. Rudolf , Russell B. , 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. , Soleti S. R. , Spentzouris P. , Spitz J. , John J. St. , Strauss T. , Sutton K. , Sword-Fehlberg S. , Szelc A. M. , Tagg N. , Tang W. , Terao K. , Thomson M. , Thornton R. T. , Toups M. , Tsai Y.-T. , Tufanli S. , Usher T. , Van De Pontseele W. , Van de Water R. G. , Viren B. , Weber M. , Wei H. , Wickremasinghe D. A. , Wierman K. , Williams Z. , Wolbers S. , Wongjirad T. , Woodruff K. , Yang T. , Yarbrough G. , Yates L. E. , Zeller G. P. , Zennamo J. , Zhang C. 
Published: August 2019

Cosmic ray (CR) interactions can be a challenging source of background for neutrino oscillation and cross-section measurements in surface detectors. We present methods for CR rejection in measurements of charged-current quasielastic-like (CCQE-like) neutrino interactions, with a muon and a proton in the final state, measured using liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPCs). Using a sample of cosmic data collected with the MicroBooNE detector, mixed with simulated neutrino scattering events, a set of event selection criteria is developed that produces an event sample with minimal contribution from CR background. Depending on the selection criteria used a purity between 50 and 80% can be achieved with a signal selection efficiency between 50 and 25%, with higher purity coming at the expense of lower efficiency. While using a specific dataset and selection criteria values optimized for the MicroBooNE detector, the concepts presented here are generic and can be adapted for various studies of exclusive $$\nu _{\mu }$$

ν
μ

CCQE interactions in LArTPCs.