Sensitivity of an expanded inclusive search for MiniBooNE-like excess in MicroBooNE data

Abstract

This dissertation presents the results of a study of how sensitive the MicroBooNE experiment is to an excess of neutrino events with the same topology of the currently-unexplained excess of events observed by the MiniBooNE experiment. This is done by a novel analysis in which events are selected from the MicroBooNE simulation data using only information that was available to MiniBooNE. In order to avoid using information unavailable to MiniBooNE, the neutrino energy was reconstructed assuming all events were quasi-elastic electron neutrino scattering. This study utilizes the Monte Carlo data sets created by MicroBooNE to simulate a subset of the data collected by MicroBooNE from 2015-2021 from a total exposure of the neutrino target of 1.1 x 10²¹ protons. Some particles are too low velocity to generate Cherenkov radiation in a MiniBooNE-like detector. Therefore, MiniBooNE-like cuts were used to search for the specific topology of one Cherenkov-visible shower and zero Cherenkov-visible muon tracks to simulate the MicroBooNE Monte Carlo coming out of a MiniBooNE-like detector. This gives a better approximation of the original MiniBooNE analysis that identified the low-energy excess while not being constrained by looking at only single channels. The results of this study can now be compared to an analysis of the full MicroBooNE data.