Type: Article
Publication Date: 2022-06-13
Citations: 28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.105.112005
We report a search for an anomalous excess of inclusive charged-current (CC) νe interactions using the Wire-Cell event reconstruction package in the MicroBooNE experiment, which is motivated by the previous observation of a low-energy excess (LEE) of electromagnetic events from the MiniBooNE experiment. With a single liquid argon time projection chamber detector, the measurements of νμ CC interactions as well as π0 interactions are used to constrain signal and background predictions of νe CC interactions. A data set collected from February 2016 to July 2018 corresponding to an exposure of 6.369×1020 protons on target from the Booster Neutrino Beam at FNAL is analyzed. With x representing an overall normalization factor and referred to as the LEE strength parameter, we select 56 fully contained νe CC candidates while expecting 69.6±8.0 (stat.) ±5.0 (sys.) and 103.8±9.0 (stat.) ±7.4 (sys.) candidates after constraints for the absence (eLEEx=0) of the median signal strength derived from the MiniBooNE observation and the presence (eLEEx=1) of that signal strength, respectively. Under a nested hypothesis test using both rate and shape information in all available channels, the best-fit x is determined to be 0 (eLEEx=0) with a 95.5% confidence level upper limit of x at 0.502. Under a simple-vs-simple hypotheses test, the eLEEx=1 hypothesis is rejected at 3.75σ, while the eLEEx=0 hypothesis is shown to be consistent with the observation at 0.45σ. In the context of the eLEE model, the estimated 68.3% confidence interval of the νe CC hypothesis to explain the LEE observed in the MiniBooNE experiment is disfavored at a significance level of more than 2.6σ (3.0σ) considering MiniBooNE’s full (statistical) uncertainties.25 MoreReceived 30 October 2021Accepted 10 March 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.112005Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Physical SystemsNeutrinosParticles & Fields