Cross Sections of Rare Neutrino Interactions with MicroBooNE [Chris Thorpe]

Friday 23 Feb 2024, 12:30 → 14:30 Europe/London

Blackett LT

MicroBooNE is Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC), able to image neutrino interactions with excellent spatial resolution, enabling the identification of complex final states resulting from neutrino-nucleus interactions. This seminar will describe two recent measurements of neutrino interaction processes that have never been studied in a modern neutrino experiment: Λ baryon production, and η meson production.
η mesons may be produced by the decays of resonances above the ∆(1232), and provide an additional handle to study their creation in neutrino interactions. η mesons decay to a pair of photons, offering a standard candle to study the response of the detector to electromagnetic showers complimentary to the neutral pion.
The Cabibbo suppressed production of hyperons in anti-neutrino-nucleus interactions provides sensitivity to a range of phenomena affecting neutrino-nucleus scattering, some of which are unique to hyperon production. The effects of nucleon structure, and the secondary interactions of hadrons as they attempt to escape from the nucleus, are distinct from those affecting other neutrino scattering processes, and provide an opportunity to disentangle them from the physics of the initial neutrino-nucleon collision