Search

A novel method to reconstruct the energy of hadronic showers in the CMS High Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL) is presented. The HGCAL is a sampling calorimeter with very fine transverse and longitudinal granularity. The active media are silicon sensors and scintillator tiles readout by SiPMs and the absorbers are a combination of lead and Cu/CuW in the electromagnetic section, and steel in the hadronic section. The shower reconstruction method is based on graph neural networks and it makes use of a dynamic reduction network architecture. It is shown that the algorithm is able to capture and mitigate the main effects that normally hinder the reconstruction of hadronic showers using classical reconstruction methods, by compensating for fluctuations in the multiplicity, energy, and spatial distributions of the shower's constituents. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using test beam data collected in 2018 prototype of the CMS HGCAL accompanied by a section of the CALICE AHCAL prototype. The capability of the method to mitigate the impact of energy leakage from the calorimeter is also demonstrated., Comment: Prepared for submission to JINST

Neutron production in antineutrino interactions can lead to bias in energy reconstruction in neutrino oscillation experiments, but these interactions have rarely been studied. MINERvA previously studied neutron production at an average antineutrino energy of ~3 GeV in 2016 and found deficiencies in leading models. In this paper, the MINERvA 6 GeV average antineutrino energy data set is shown to have similar disagreements. A measurement of the cross section for an antineutrino to produce two or more neutrons and have low visible energy is presented as an experiment-independent way to explore neutron production modeling. This cross section disagrees with several leading models' predictions. Neutron modeling techniques from nuclear physics are used to quantify neutron detection uncertainties on this result., Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures; Added ancillary files with cross section values as .csv Matches preprint accepted by publisher

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., Comment: 9 pages, 8 flgures, including supplemental material

We present measurements of the cross section for anti-neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon using the medium energy (ME) NuMI wide-band neutrino beam peaking at $\sim 6$ GeV. The cross section measurements are presented as a function of the longitudinal momentum ($p_{||}$) and transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) of the final state muon. This work complements our previously reported high statistics measurement in the neutrino channel and extends the previous anti-neutrino measurement made in the low energy (LE) beam at neutrino energy($$) $\sim$ 3.5 GeV to $p_{T}$ of 2.5 GeV/c. Current theoretical models do not completely describe the data in this previously unexplored high $p_{T}$ region. The single differential cross section as a function of four momentum transfer ($Q^{2}_{QE}$) now extends to 4 GeV$^2$ with high statistics. The cross section as a function of $Q^{2}_{QE}$ shows that the tuned simulations developed by the MINERvA collaboration that agreed well with the low energy beam measurements do not agree as well with the medium energy beam measurements. Newer neutrino interaction models such as the GENIE 3 tunes are better able to simulate the high $Q^{2}_{QE}$., Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures

MINERvA has measured the $\nu_{\mu}$-induced coherent $\pi^{+}$ cross section simultaneously in hydrocarbon (CH), graphite (C), iron (Fe) and lead (Pb) targets using neutrinos from 2 to 20 GeV. The measurements exceed the predictions of the Rein-Sehgal and Berger-Sehgal PCAC based models at multi-GeV $\nu_{\mu}$ energies and at produced $\pi^{+}$ energies and angles, $E_{\pi}>1$ GeV and $\theta_{\pi}<10^{\circ}$. Measurements of the cross-section ratios of Fe and Pb relative to CH reveal the effective $A$-scaling to increase from an approximate $A^{1/3}$ scaling at few GeV to an $A^{2/3}$ scaling for $E_{\nu}>10$ GeV., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures and 60 pages of supplemental material. Updated to accepted version, with ancillary files of the cross section data

Neutrino-induced charged-current single $\pi^+$ production in the $\Delta(1232)$ resonance region is of considerable interest to accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments. In this work, high statistics differential cross sections are reported for the semi-exclusive reaction $\nu_\mu A \to \mu^- \pi^+ +$ nucleon(s) on scintillator, carbon, water, iron, and lead targets recorded by MINERvA using a wide-band $\nu_\mu$ beam with $\left< E_\nu \right> \approx 6$~GeV. Suppression of the cross section at low $Q^2$ and enhancement of low $T_\pi$ are observed in both light and heavy nuclear targets compared to phenomenological models used in current neutrino interaction generators. The cross-section ratios for iron and lead compared to CH across the kinematic variables probed are 0.8 and 0.5 respectively, a scaling which is also not predicted by current generators., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, 117 pages of supplementary material; updated to accepted version and added ancillary files with cross section data; updated again to add ancillary files with neutrino flux used for result

Processes with precisely known cross sections, like neutrino electron elastic scattering ($\nu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \nu e^{-}$) and inverse muon decay ($\nu_\mu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \mu^{-} \nu_e$) 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\%., Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures

Healthcare datasets obtained from Electronic Health Records have proven to be extremely useful to assess associations between patients' predictors and outcomes of interest. However, these datasets often suffer from missing values in a high proportion of cases and the simple removal of these cases may introduce severe bias. For these reasons, several multiple imputation algorithms have been proposed to attempt to recover the missing information. Each algorithm presents strengths and weaknesses, and there is currently no consensus on which multiple imputation algorithms works best in a given scenario. Furthermore, the selection of each algorithm parameters and data-related modelling choices are also both crucial and challenging. In this paper, we propose a novel framework to numerically evaluate strategies for handling missing data in the context of statistical analysis, with a particular focus on multiple imputation techniques. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach on a large cohort of type-2 diabetes patients provided by the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Enclave, where we explored the influence of various patient characteristics on outcomes related to COVID-19. Our analysis included classic multiple imputation techniques as well as simple complete-case Inverse Probability Weighted models. The experiments presented here show that our approach could effectively highlight the most valid and performant missing-data handling strategy for our case study. Moreover, our methodology allowed us to gain an understanding of the behavior of the different models and of how it changed as we modified their parameters. Our method is general and can be applied to different research fields and on datasets containing heterogeneous types.

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 $\nu_{\mu}$ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wide-band beam spanning 2 $\leq$ E$_\nu \leq$ 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., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary 18 figures

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.

The \minerva experiment reports double-differential cross-section measurements for $\nu_{\mu}$-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.

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., Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures. Accepted as invited contribution to EPJ special issue "Neutrino Interactions in the Intermediate and High Energy Region. Guest editors: Mohammad Sajjad Athar and Shri Krishna Singh"

Inverse muon decay, $\nu_\mu e^-\to\mu^-\nu_e$, 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., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Physical Review D. Minor corrections and clarifications

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., Comment: 20 pages, 19 figures

Rabi-like splitting and self-referenced refractive index sensing in hybrid plasmonic-1D photonic crystal structures have been theoretically demonstrated. The coupling between Tamm plasmon and cavity photon modes are tuned by incorporating a low refractive index spacer layer adjacent to the metallic layer to form their hybrid modes. Anticrossing of the modes observed at different values of spacer layer thickness validates the strong coupling between the two modes and causes Rabi-like splitting with different splitting energy. Rabi-like splitting energy decreases with increasing number of periods (N) and refractive index contrast ({\eta}) of two dielectric materials used to make the 1D photonic crystals, and the observed variation is explained by an analytical model. Angular and polarization dependency of the hybrid modes shows that the polarization splitting of the lower hybrid mode is much stronger than that of the upper hybrid mode. On further investigation, it is seen that one of the hybrid modes remains unchanged while other mode undergoes significant change with varying the cavity medium. This nature of the hybrid modes has been utilized for designing self-referenced refractive index sensors for sensing different analytes. For {\eta}=1.333 and N=10 in a hybrid structure, the sensitivity increases from 51 nm/RIU to 201 nm/RIU with increasing cavity thickness from 170 nm to 892 nm. For the fixed cavity thickness of 892 nm, the sensitivity increases from 201 nm/RIU to 259 nm/RIU by increasing {\eta} from 1.333 to 1.605. The sensing parameters such as detection accuracy, quality factor, and figure of merit for two different hybrid structures ([{\eta}=1.333, N=10] and [{\eta}=1.605, N=6]) have been evaluated and compared. The value of resonant reflectivity of one of the hybrid modes changes considerably with varying analyte medium which can be used for refractive index sensing.

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., Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, Replaced with accepted version

We introduce the MINERvA Analysis Toolkit (MAT), a utility for centralizing the handling of systematic uncertainties in HEP analyses. The fundamental utilities of the toolkit are the MnvHnD, a powerful histogram container class, and the systematic Universe classes, which provide a modular implementation of the many universe error analysis approach. These products can be used stand-alone or as part of a complete error analysis prescription. They support the propagation of systematic uncertainty through all stages of analysis, and provide flexibility for an arbitrary level of user customization. This extensible solution to error analysis enables the standardization of systematic uncertainty definitions across an experiment and a transparent user interface to lower the barrier to entry for new analyzers.

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 $\langle E_\nu \rangle$ 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 $\nu_e$ events arising from $\nu_{\mu} \rightarrow \nu_{e}$ appearance., Comment: 26 pages, v2 matches published version

A simple user-friendly software named PRISA has been developed to determine optical constants (refractive index and extinction co-efficient), dispersion parameters (oscillator energy and dispersion energy), absorption co-efficient, band gap and thickness of semiconductor and dielectric thin films from their measured transmission spectrum, only. The thickness, refractive index, and extinction co-efficient of the films have been derived using Envelope method proposed by Swanepoel. The absorption co-efficient in the strong absorption region is calculated using the method proposed by Connel and Lewis. Subsequently, both direct and indirect bandgap of the films is estimated from the absorption co-efficient spectrum using Tauc plot. The codes for the software are written in Python and the graphical user interface is programmed with tkinter package of Python. It provides convenient input and output of the measured and derived data. The software has a feature to retrieve transmission spectrum using the derived parameters in order to check their reliability. The performance of the software is verified by analyzing numerically generated transmission spectra of a-Si:H amorphous semiconductor thin films, and experimentally measured transmission spectra of electron beam evaporated HfO2 dielectric thin films as examples. PRISA is found to be much simpler and accurate as compared to the other freely available softwares. To help other researchers working on thin films, the software is made freely available at https://www.shuvendujena.tk/download.

Between 2013 and 2019 MINERvA collected an accelerator neutrino interaction dataset that is uniquely relevant to the energy range of DUNE. These are the only currently available data at intermediate and high momentum transfers for multiple nuclear targets in the same beam. MINERvA is undertaking a campaign to preserve these data and make them publicly available so that they may be analyzed beyond the end of the MINERvA collaboration. We encourage the community to consider the development of centralized resources to enable long-term access to these data and analysis tools for the entire HEP community., Comment: Snowmass 2021 Contributed Paper

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., Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures

We study neutrino-induced charged-current (CC) $\pi^0$ production on carbon nuclei using events with fully imaged final-state proton-$\pi^0$ systems. Novel use of final-state correlations based on transverse kinematic imbalance enable the first measurements of the struck nucleon's Fermi motion, of the intranuclear momentum transfer (IMT) dynamics, and of the final-state hadronic momentum configuration in neutrino pion production. Event distributions are presented for i) the momenta of neutrino-struck neutrons below the Fermi surface, ii) the direction of missing transverse momentum characterizing the strength of IMT, and iii) proton-pion momentum imbalance with respect to the lepton scattering plane. The observed Fermi motion and IMT strength are compared to the previous MINERvA measurement of neutrino CC quasielastic-like production. The measured shapes and absolute rates of these distributions, as well as the cross-section asymmetries show tensions with predictions from current neutrino generator models., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. v3: PRD-accepted version, with full package of supplemental materials; v4: added 2 missing references

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 ($d\sigma/dQ_{QE}^2$) 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., Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures

We have measured new observables based on the final state kinematic imbalances in the mesonless production of $\nu_\mu+A\rightarrow\mu^-+p+X$ in the $\text{MINER}\nu\text{A}$ tracker. Components of the muon-proton momentum imbalances parallel ($\delta p_\mathrm{Ty}$) and perpendicular($\delta p_\mathrm{Tx}$) to the momentum transfer in the transverse plane are found to be sensitive to the nuclear effects such as Fermi motion, binding energy and non-QE contributions. The QE peak location in $\delta p_\mathrm{Ty}$ is particularly sensitive to the binding energy. Differential cross sections are compared to predictions from different neutrino interaction models. The Fermi gas models presented in this study cannot simultaneously describe features such as QE peak location, width and the non-QE events contributing to the signal process. Correcting the GENIE's binding energy implementation according to theory causes better agreement with data. Hints of proton left-right asymmetry are observed in $\delta p_\mathrm{Tx}$. Better modeling of the binding energy can reduce bias in neutrino energy reconstruction and these observables can be applied in current and future experiments to better constrain nuclear effects., Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures; Added data release file in .root format