SBND Cross-Section Analysis

The understanding of several aspects of neutrino interaction physics is still driven by small samples of just a few hundred events recorded in the bubble chamber era in the 70's and 80's. These data sets are still unique as they afforded a very detailed look at neutrino event characteristics. The new liquid-Argon (LAr) Time Projection Chamber (TPC) experiments, that are now coming online, have neutrino event imaging capabilities comparable to that of bubble chamber experiments but much higher statistics. Data from these new experiments employing LArTPC detectors can bring a generational advance in neutrino studies. By the end of this decade, some of most precise measurements of neutrino interaction characteristics will come from the SBND experiment experiment (a 112-tonne fiducial mass LArTPC experiment, 110 m from the Booster neutrino beam target). The SBND experiment will start taking data in 2018. A sample of more than 1M events would be collected by SBND in just one year of running. Quasielastic scattering (QE) will be the dominant interaction mechanism in SBND. QE remains very relevant through all the few-GeV energy region and it is critically important in neutrino oscillation studies. On single nucleons, this process is theoretically understood and relatively well constrained by experimental information from electron scattering, neutron B decay and neutrino experiments on Hydrogen and Deuterium. However, for more than a decade, we had been unable to describe nuclear QE-like data with models based on interactions on single nucleons alone, revealing the importance of two-nucleon interactions. The latter has been further stressed by ab-initio calculations of nuclear response functions. Despite the recent progress, a comprehensive description of two-nucleon currents and collective effects is still missing.
The project will involve the pursuit of model-independent flux-integrated differential cross-section measurements of charged-current QE-like scattering using SBND data. Using the SBND QE-like measurements, as well as measurements from other experiments and recent theoretical work implemented within the GENIE neutrino Monte Carlo simulation, a comprehensive characterisation of theoretical models will be performed around the QE peak. The experimental measurements and model characterisation will enable a substantial contribution to the development of a new global tune of the GENIE simulation aiming specifically to improve neutrino interaction modeling in Argon for the early DUNE physics exploitation programme. This project will also play an important role in the SBND