Search for an Anomalous Excess of Low-Energy Neutrino Interactions in the MicroBooNE Experiment
Dr. Hanyu Wei
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Brookhaven National Laboratory
The nature of the low-energy excess (LEE) anomaly observed by the MiniBooNE experiment is a long-standing question. Located in the same Booster Neutrino Beamline at Fermilab and at a similar location as the MiniBooNE detector, the MicroBooNE liquid-argon time-projection chamber is used to address this question by measuring neutrino interactions with superb imaging and calorimetry capability. MicroBooNE has demonstrated excellent capability in identifying hadronic final-state particles and separating electrons from photons thus enabling multiple searches for anomalous LEE signals using different exclusive and inclusive charged-current electron neutrino interaction (eLEE) channels and neutral-current interactions with Delta radiative decays (gLEE). Simplified data-driven empirical LEE models extracted from the MiniBooNE observation are utilized to quantify the search results with statistical hypothesis tests. In this talk, I’ll report the results from the multiple LEE searches in the MicroBooNE experiment and discuss their implications.
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