| Summary: | For a large liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) operating on or
near the Earth's surface to detect neutrino interactions, the rejection of
cosmogenic background is a critical and challenging task because of the large
cosmic ray flux and the long drift time of the TPC. We introduce a superior
cosmic background rejection procedure based on the Wire-Cell three-dimensional
(3D) event reconstruction for LArTPCs. From an initial 1:20,000 neutrino to
cosmic-ray background ratio, we demonstrate these tools on data from the
MicroBooNE experiment and create a high performance generic neutrino event
selection with a cosmic contamination of 14.9\% (9.7\%) for a visible energy
region greater than O(200)~MeV. The neutrino interaction selection efficiency
is 80.4\% and 87.6\% for inclusive $\nu_\mu$ charged-current and $\nu_e$
charged-current interactions, respectively. This significantly improved
performance compared to existing reconstruction algorithms, marks a major
milestone toward reaching the scientific goals of LArTPC neutrino oscillation
experiments operating near the Earth's surface.
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