Cosmic ray background rejection with wire-cell LArTPC event reconstruction in the MicroBooNE detector
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 time-projection chamb...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Other Authors: | |
Format: | Journal article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
American Physical Society
2021
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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 time-projection chamber. 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 νμ charged-current and νe charged-current interactions, respectively. This significantly improved performance compared with 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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