arXiv subjects

Kevin McFarland

Publications and source records attributed to Kevin McFarland.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

A Beamdump Facility at Jefferson Lab

This White Paper is exploring the potential of intense secondary muon, neutrino, and (hypothetical) light dark matter beams produced in interactions of high-intensity electron beams with beam dumps. Light dark matter searches with the approved Beam Dump eXperiment (BDX) are driving the realization of a new underground vault at Jefferson Lab that could be extended to a Beamdump Facility with minimal additional installations. The paper summarizes contributions and discussions from the International Workshop on Secondary Beams at Jefferson Lab (BDX & Beyond). Several possible muon physics applications and neutrino detector technologies for Jefferson Lab are highlighted. The potential of a secondary neutron beam will be addressed in a future edition.

physics.acc-ph↗

arXiv2020

Summary of Workshop on Common Neutrino Event Generator Tools

A neutrino community workshop was held at Fermilab in Jan 2020, with the aim of developing an implementation plan for a set of common interfaces to Neutrino Event Generators. This white paper summarizes discussions at the workshop and the resulting plan.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2016

Constraining the GENIE model of neutrino-induced single pion production using reanalyzed bubble chamber data

The longstanding discrepancy between bubble chamber measurements of $ν_μ$-induced single pion production channels has led to large uncertainties in pion production cross section parameters for many years. We extend the reanalysis of pion production data in deuterium bubble chambers where this discrepancy is solved (Wilkinson et al., PRD 90 (2014) 112017) to include the $ν_μn\rightarrow μ^{-}pπ^{0}$ and $ν_μn\rightarrow μ^{-}nπ^{+}$ channels, and use the resulting data to fit the parameters of the GENIE (Rein-Sehgal) pion production model. We find a set of parameters that can describe the bubble chamber data better than the GENIE default parameters, and provide updated central values and reduced uncertainties for use in neutrino oscillation and cross section analyses which use the GENIE model. We find that GENIE's non-resonant background prediction has to be significantly reduced to fit the data, which may help to explain the recent discrepancies between simulation and data observed by the MINERvA coherent pion and NOvA oscillation analyses.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2014

Reanalysis of bubble chamber measurements of muon-neutrino induced single pion production

There exists a longstanding disagreement between bubble chamber measurements of the single pion production channel $ν_μp\rightarrow μ^{-}pπ^{+}$ from the Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories. We digitize and reanalyse data from both experiments to produce cross-section ratios for various interaction channels, for which the flux uncertainties cancel, and find good agreement between the experiments. By multiplying the cross-section ratio by the well-understood charged current quasi-elastic cross-section on free nucleons, we extract single-pion production cross-sections which do not depend on the flux normalization predictions. The $ν_μp\rightarrow μ^{-}pπ^{+}$ cross-sections we extract show good agreement between the ANL and BNL datasets.

hep-ex↗

arXiv2008

A new analysis technique to measure the W Production Charge Asymmetry at the Tevatron

We propose an analysis technique to directly measure W production charge asymmetry from W leptonic decay events at the Tevatron and show the feasibility for new analysis method using Monte Carlo simulations.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2008

Neutrino Interactions

This manuscript summarizes a series of three lectures on interactions of neutrinos . The lectures begin with a pedagogical foundation and then explore topics of interest to current and future neutrino oscillation and cross-section experiments.

hep-ex↗