Measuring Single Charged Pion Production in Muon Neutrino Interactions on Argon with MicroBooNE

Neutrinos are the most abundant massive particles known, but they interact only rarely with matter. Next-generation experiments such as DUNE aim to measure charge-parity violation in the lepton sector through flavour oscillations of neutrinos propagating over long distances before interacting with a liquid argon target. Accurate determination of the neutrino energy, crucial for oscillation studies, requires a good understanding of neutrino–nucleus interactions. At the neutrino energies planned for DUNE, resonance production with pion emission will be the dominant interaction mode. This thesis presents new flux-integrated charged-current muon neutrino cross-section measurements on argon for final states containing exactly one charged pion and no other hadrons beyond nucleons. The analysis uses data from the liquid argon time-projection chamber experiment MicroBooNE, situated in the Booster Neutrino Beam at Fermilab, corresponding to 1.11 × 10²¹ protons-on-target. Total and single-differential cross sections are reported within a restricted phase space of muon momenta above 150 MeV, pion momenta above 100 MeV, and muon–pion opening angles below 2.65 rad. Differential results are given with respect to the muon and pion momenta, their scattering angles relative to the beam, and their opening angle. The total cross section is measured to be σ = (3.75 ± 0.07 (stat.) ± 0.80 (syst.)) × 10⁻³⁸ cm² per argon nucleus at a mean neutrino beam energy of ~0.8 GeV. Comparisons with multiple neutrino–nucleus generators highlight areas for model improvement, particularly at very forward muon angles and at low pion momentum. Together, these high-statistics measurements provide essential input for constraining systematic uncertainties and improving interaction models for future experiments.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Detje, Jan

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Melissa, Uchida
• Oleg, Brandt

• cross section
• neutrino
• pion
• MicroBooNE

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/772449db-0b63-49c4-b670-743110a164b8/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0000-0002-5883-0053

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/396021