arXiv subjects

S. Manly

Publications and source records attributed to S. Manly.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Simultaneous measurement of muon neutrino quasielastic-like cross sections on CH, C, water, Fe, and Pb as a function of muon kinematics at MINERvA

This paper presents the first simultaneous measurement of the quasielastic-like neutrino-nucleus cross sections on C, water, Fe, Pb and scintillator (hydrocarbon or CH) as a function of longitudinal and transverse muon momentum. The ratio of cross sections per nucleon between Pb and CH is always above unity and has a characteristic shape as a function of transverse muon momentum that evolves slowly as a function of longitudinal muon momentum. The ratio is constant versus longitudinal momentum within uncertainties above a longitudinal momentum of 4.5GeV/c. The cross section ratios to CH for C, water, and Fe remain roughly constant with increasing longitudinal momentum, and the ratios between water or C to CH do not have any significant deviation from unity. Both the overall cross section level and the shape for Pb and Fe as a function of transverse muon momentum are not reproduced by current neutrino event generators. These measurements provide a direct test of nuclear effects in quasielastic-like interactions, which are major contributors to long-baseline neutrino oscillation data samples.

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arXiv2022

Neutron detection and application with a novel 3D-projection scintillator tracker in the future long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments

Neutrino oscillation experiments require a precise measurement of the neutrino energy. However, the kinematic detection of the final-state neutron in the neutrino interaction is missing in current neutrino oscillation experiments. The missing neutron kinematic detection results in a feed-down of the detected neutrino energy compared to the true neutrino energy. A novel 3D\textcolor{black}{-}projection scintillator tracker, which consists of roughly ten million active cubes covered with an optical reflector, is capable of measuring the neutron kinetic energy and direction on an event-by-event basis using the time-of-flight technique thanks to the fast timing, fine granularity, and high light yield. The $\barν_μ$ interactions tend to produce neutrons in the final state. By inferring the neutron kinetic energy, the $\barν_μ$ energy can be reconstructed better, allowing a tighter incoming neutrino flux constraint. This paper shows the detector's ability to reconstruct neutron kinetic energy and the $\barν_μ$ flux constraint achieved by selecting the charged-current interactions without mesons or protons in the final state.

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arXiv2022

Measurement of inclusive charged-current $ν_μ$ cross sections as a function of muon kinematics at $ \sim6~GeV$ on hydrocarbon

MINERvA presents a new analysis of inclusive charged-current neutrino interactions on a hydrocarbon target. We report single and double-differential cross sections in muon transverse and longitudinal momentum. These measurements are compared to neutrino interaction generator predictions from GENIE, NuWro, GiBUU, and NEUT. In addition, comparisons against models with different treatments of multi-nucleon correlations, nuclear effects, resonant pion production, and deep inelastic scattering are presented. The data recorded corresponds to $10.61\times10^{20}$ protons on target with a peak neutrino energy of approximately 6 GeV. The higher energy and larger statistics of these data extend the kinematic range for model testing beyond previous MINERvA inclusive charged-current measurements. The results are not well modeled by several generator predictions using a variety of input models.

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arXiv2022

Improved constraint on the MINERvA medium energy neutrino flux using $\barνe^{-} \!\rightarrow \barνe^{-}$ data

Processes with precisely known cross sections, like neutrino electron elastic scattering ($νe^{-} \!\rightarrow νe^{-}$) and inverse muon decay ($ν_μe^{-} \!\rightarrow μ^{-} ν_e$) have been used by MINERvA to constrain the uncertainty on the NuMI neutrino beam flux. This work presents a new measurement of neutrino elastic scattering with electrons using the medium energy \numubar enhanced NuMI beam. A sample of 578 events after background subtraction is used in combination with the previous measurement on the \numu beam and the inverse muon decay measurement to reduce the uncertainty on the \numu flux in the \numu-enhanced beam from 7.6\% to 3.3\% and the \numubar flux in the \numubar-enhanced beam from 7.8\% to 4.7\%.

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arXiv2022

Measurement of inclusive charged-current $ν_{\numu}$ scattering on hydrocarbon at { } 6 GeV with low three-momentum transfer

The \minerva experiment reports double-differential cross-section measurements for $ν_μ$-carbon interactions with three-momentum transfer $|\vec{q}| < 1.2$ GeV obtained with medium energy exposures in the NuMI beam. These measurements are performed as a function of the three-momentum transfer and an energy transfer estimator called the available energy defined as the energy that would be visible in the detector. The double differential cross sections are compared to the GENIE and NuWro predictions along with the modified version of GENIE which incorporates new models for better agreement with earlier measurements from MINERvA. In these measurements, the quasi-elastic, resonance, and multi-nucleon knockout processes appear at different kinematics in this two-dimensional space. The results can be used to improve models for neutrino interactions needed by neutrino oscillation experiments.

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arXiv2022

Simultaneous measurement of proton and lepton kinematics in quasielastic-like $ν_μ$-hydrocarbon interactions from 2 to 20 GeV

Neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering, a reaction category extensively used in neutrino oscillation measurements, probes nuclear effects that govern neutrino-nucleus interactions. This Letter reports the first measurement of the triple-differential cross section for $ν_μ$ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wide-band beam spanning 2 $\leq$ E$_ν\leq$ 20 GeV. The measurement maps the correlations among transverse and longitudinal muon momenta and summed proton kinetic energies, and compares them to predictions from a state-of-art simulation. Discrepancies are observed that likely reflect shortfalls with modeling of pion and nucleon intranuclear scattering and/or spectator nucleon ejection from struck nuclei. The separate determination of leptonic and hadronic variables can inform experimental approaches to neutrino-energy estimation.

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arXiv2022

Use of Neutrino Scattering Events with Low Hadronic Recoil to Inform Neutrino Flux and Detector Energy Scale

Charged-current neutrino interactions with low hadronic recoil ("low-nu") have a cross-section that is approximately constant versus neutrino energy. These interactions have been used to measure the shape of neutrino fluxes as a function of neutrino energy at accelerator-based neutrino experiments such as CCFR, NuTeV, MINOS and MINERvA. In this paper, we demonstrate that low-nu events can be used to measure parameters of neutrino flux and detector models and that utilization of event distributions over the upstream detector face can discriminate among parameters that affect the neutrino flux model. From fitting a large sample of low-nu events obtained by exposing MINERvA to the NuMI medium-energy beam, we find that the best-fit flux parameters are within their a priori uncertainties, but the energy scale of muons reconstructed in the MINOS detector is shifted by 3.6% (or 1.8 times the a priori uncertainty on that parameter). These fit results are now used in all MINERvA cross-section measurements, and this technique can be applied by other experiments operating at MINERvA energies, such as DUNE.

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arXiv2022

Neutral pion reconstruction using machine learning in the MINERvA experiment at $\langle E_ν\rangle \sim 6$ GeV

This paper presents a novel neutral-pion reconstruction that takes advantage of the machine learning technique of semantic segmentation using MINERvA data collected between 2013-2017, with an average neutrino energy of $6$ GeV. Semantic segmentation improves the purity of neutral pion reconstruction from two gammas from 71\% to 89\% and improves the efficiency of the reconstruction by approximately 40\%. We demonstrate our method in a charged current neutral pion production analysis where a single neutral pion is reconstructed. This technique is applicable to modern tracking calorimeters, such as the new generation of liquid-argon time projection chambers, exposed to neutrino beams with $\langle E_ν\rangle$ between 1-10 GeV. In such experiments it can facilitate the identification of ionization hits which are associated with electromagnetic showers, thereby enabling improved reconstruction of charged-current $ν_e$ events arising from $ν_μ \rightarrow ν_{e}$ appearance.

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arXiv2022

Constraint of the MINERvA Medium Energy Neutrino Flux using Neutrino-Electron Elastic Scattering

Elastic neutrino scattering on electrons is a precisely-known purely leptonic process that provides a standard candle for measuring neutrino flux in conventional neutrino beams. Using a total sample of 810 neutino-electron scatters after background subtraction, the measurement reduces the normalization uncertainty on the muon neutrino NuMI flux between 2 and 20 GeV from 7.5% to 3.9%. This is the most precise measurement of neutrino-electron scattering to date, will reduce uncertainties on MINERvA's absolute cross section measurements, and demonstrates a technique that can be used in future neutrino beams such as LBNF.

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arXiv2022

Vertex finding in neutrino-nucleus interaction: A Model Architecture Comparison

We compare different neural network architectures for Machine Learning (ML) algorithms designed to identify the neutrino interaction vertex position in the MINERvA detector. The architectures developed and optimized by hand are compared with the architectures developed in an automated way using the package "Multi-node Evolutionary Neural Networks for Deep Learning" (MENNDL), developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The two architectures resulted in a similar performance which suggests that the systematics associated with the optimized network architecture are small. Furthermore, we find that while the domain expert hand-tuned network was the best performer, the differences were negligible and the auto-generated networks performed well. There is always a trade-off between human, and computer resources for network optimization and this work suggests that automated optimization, assuming resources are available, provides a compelling way to save significant expert time.

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arXiv2021

Constraining the NuMI neutrino flux using inverse muon decay reactions in MINERvA

Inverse muon decay, $ν_μe^-\toμ^-ν_e$, is a reaction whose cross-section can be predicted with very small uncertainties. It has a neutrino energy threshold of $\approx 11$ GeV and can be used to constrain the high-energy part of the flux in the NuMI neutrino beam. This reaction is the dominant source of events which only contain high-energy muons nearly parallel to the direction of the neutrino beam. We have isolated a sample of hundreds of such events in neutrino and anti-neutrino enhanced beams, and have constrained the predicted high-energy flux.

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arXiv2021

Exploring Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the GeV Regime using MINERvA

With the advance of particle accelerator and detector technologies, the neutrino physics landscape is rapidly expanding. As neutrino oscillation experiments enter the intensity and precision frontiers, neutrino-nucleus interaction measurements are providing crucial input. MINERvA is an experiment at Fermilab dedicated to the study of neutrino-nucleus interactions in the regime of incident neutrino energies from one to few GeV. The experiment recorded neutrino and antineutrino scattering data with the NuMI beamline from 2009 to 2019 using the Low-Energy and Medium-Energy beams that peak at 3 GeV and 6 GeV, respectively. This article reviews the broad spectrum of interesting nuclear and particle physics that MINERvA investigations have illuminated. The newfound, detailed knowledge of neutrino interactions with nuclear targets thereby obtained is proving essential to continued progress in the neutrino physics sector.

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arXiv2020

High-statistics measurement of neutrino quasielastic-like scattering at =~6 GeV on a hydrocarbon target

We measure neutrino charged current quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon at high statistics using the wide-band NuMI beam with neutrino energy peaked at 6 GeV. The double-differential cross section is reported in terms of muon longitudinal and transverse momentum. Cross-section contours versus lepton momentum components are approximately described by a conventional generator-based simulation, however discrepancies are observed for transverse momenta above 0.5 GeV/c for longitudinal momentum ranges 3 to 5 GeV/c and 9 to 20 GeV/c. The single differential cross section versus momentum transfer squared ($dσ/dQ_{QE}^2$) is measured over a four-decade range of $Q^2$ that extends to $10~GeV^2$. The cross section turn-over and fall-off in the $Q^2$ range 0.3 to $10~GeV^2$ is not fully reproduced by generator predictions that rely on dipole form factors. Our measurement probes the axial-vector content of the hadronic current and complements the electromagnetic form factor data obtained using electron-nucleon elastic scattering. These results help oscillation experiments because they probe the importance of various correlations and final-state interaction effects within the nucleus, which have different effects on the visible energy in detectors.

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arXiv2020

Double-Differential Inclusive Charged-Current $ν_μ$ Cross Sections on Hydrocarbon in MINERvA at $\langle E_ν \rangle \sim$ 3.5 GeV

MINERvA reports inclusive charged-current cross sections for muon neutrinos on hydrocarbon in the NuMI beamline. We measured the double-differential cross section in terms of the longitudinal and transverse muon momenta, as well as the single-differential cross sections in those variables. The data used in this analysis correspond to an exposure of $3.34 \times 10^{20}$ protons on target with a peak neutrino energy of approximately 3.5 GeV. Measurements are compared to the GENIE, NuWro and GiBUU neutrino cross-section predictions, as well as a version of GENIE modified to produce better agreement with prior exclusive MINERvA measurements. None of the models or variants were able to successfully reproduce the data across the entire phase space, which includes areas dominated by each interaction channel.

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arXiv2019

A new method for an improved anti-neutrino energy reconstruction with charged-current interactions in next-generation detectors

We propose and validate a method of anti-neutrino energy reconstruction for charged-current meson-less interactions on composite fully active targets containing hydrogen (such as hydrocarbon scintillator), which is largely free of the poorly understood nuclear effects that usually distort and bias attempts to measure neutrino energy. The method is based on the precise event-by-event measurement of the outgoing neutron kinetic energy and the subsequent assessment of the momentum imbalance on the plane transverse to the incoming anti-neutrino direction. For an anti-neutrino flux peaked at around 600 MeV measured using a finely grained $2\times2\times2$ m$^3$ 3D scintillator tracker the neutrino energy resolution is expected to be around 7%, compared to the 15% expected using traditional neutrino energy reconstruction techniques. Analogous results can be obtained for other detectors with similar characteristics.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2019

Tuning the GENIE Pion Production Model with MINERvA Data

Faced with unresolved tensions between neutrino interaction measurements at few-GeV neutrino energies, current experiments are forced to accept large systematic uncertainties to cover discrepancies between their data and model predictions. In this paper, the widely used pion production model in GENIE is compared to four MINERvA charged current pion production measurements using NUISANCE. Tunings, ie, adjustments of model parameters, to help match GENIE to MINERvA and older bubble chamber data are presented here. We find that scattering off nuclear targets as measured in MINERvA is not in good agreement with scattering off nucleon (hydrogen or deuterium) targets in the bubble chamber data. An additional ad hoc correction for the low-$Q^2$ region, where collective effects are expected to be large, is also presented. While these tunings and corrections improve the agreement of GENIE with the data, the modeling is imperfect. The development of these tunings within the NUISANCE frameworkallows for straightforward extensions to other neutrino event generators and models, and allows omitting and including new data sets as they become available.

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arXiv2019

Measurement of $ν_μ$ charged-current single $π^{0}$ production on hydrocarbon in the few-GeV region using MINERvA

The semi-exclusive channel $ν_μ+\textrm{CH}\rightarrowμ^{-}π^{0}+\textrm{nucleon(s)}$ is analyzed using MINERvA exposed to the low-energy NuMI $ν_μ$ beam with spectral peak at $E_ν \simeq 3$ GeV. Differential cross sections for muon momentum and production angle, $π^{0}$ kinetic energy and production angle, and for squared four-momentum transfer are reported, and the cross section $σ(E_ν)$ is obtained over the range 1.5 GeV $\leq E_ν <$ 20 GeV. Results are compared to GENIE and NuWro predictions and to published MINERvA cross sections for $ν_μ\textrm{-CC}(π^{+})$ and $\barν_μ\textrm{-CC}(π^{0})$. Disagreements between data and simulation are observed at very low and relatively high values for muon angle and for $Q^2$ that may reflect shortfalls in modeling of interactions on carbon. For $π^{0}$ kinematic distributions however, the data are consistent with the simulation and provide support for generator treatments of pion intranuclear scattering. Using signal-event subsamples that have reconstructed protons as well as $π^{0}$ mesons, the $pπ^{0}$ invariant mass distribution is obtained, and the decay polar and azimuthal angle distributions in the rest frame of the $pπ^{0}$ system are measured in the region of $Δ(1232)^+$ production, $W < 1.4$ GeV.

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arXiv2019

Neutron measurements from anti-neutrino hydrocarbon reactions

Charged-current anti-neutrino interactions on hydrocarbon scintillator in the MINERvA detector are used to study activity from their final-state neutrons. To ensure that most of the neutrons are from the primary interaction, rather than hadronic reinteractions in the detector, the sample is limited to momentum transfers below 0.8 GeV/c. From 16,129 interactions, 15,246 neutral particle candidates are observed. The reference simulation predicts 64\% of these candidates are due to neutrons from the anti-neutrino interaction directly, but also overpredicts the number of candidates by 15\% overall, which is beyond the standard uncertainty estimates for models of neutrino interactions and neutron propagation in the detector. Using the measured distributions for energy deposition, time of flight, position, and speed, we explore the sensitivity to the details those two aspects of the models. We also use multiplicity distributions to evaluate the presence of a two-nucleon knockout process. These results provide critical new information toward a complete description of the hadronic final state of neutrino interactions, which is vital to neutrino oscillation experiments.

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