Speaker
Description
The Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program consists of multiple liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) neutrino detectors placed at a series of baselines along the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The program’s physics goals include searches for oscillations induced by eV-scale sterile neutrinos, searches for new physics at the intensity frontier more broadly, and detailed studies of GeV-scale neutrino-argon interactions. Each of these physics goals relies critically on the modeling of neutrino-argon interactions. This work details the set of established and novel systematic uncertainties used in the modeling of neutrino-argon interactions in the SBN program. These include a particular focus on charged-current interactions with pion-less final states, and on characteristics of the interaction model which contribute to elucidating short-baseline neutrino oscillations at SBN. The new SBN neutrino interaction model includes many new developments for describing the systematic uncertainties relevant for neutrino-argon interactions, especially for quasi-elastic interactions, as well as those driven by meson-exchange currents. These new developments will enable the SBN physics program, and can also be considered for use by future experiments such as DUNE.