Session K11: Neutrinos III

Commissioning of the ICARUS Detector at Fermilab

The ICARUS T600 Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detector is the far detector of the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program located at Fermilab National Laboratory (FNAL) utilizing neutrinos coming from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) and Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI) off-axis beam. The detector has been taking data since May 2021. After the first run, improvements were made to the detector to further improve the data quality. With the start of the 2^nd run on December 13^th, 2022, we plan on collecting more data to investigate the observed neutrino anomalies e.g. the former electron neutrino excess from the LSND experiment and the more recent Neutrino-4 signal, as well as further the R&D for LArTPCs. I will present an overview of the experiment, detector commissioning, and improvements made to improve the quality of neutrino reconstruction.

    

Analyzing the Efficiency of the Trigger System at ICARUS

ICARUS is a Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber and serves as the far detector for the Short-Baseline Neutrino program at Fermilab. The efficiency of the PMT-based trigger system in ICARUS is important to study to maximize the amount of useful physics data collected. I will discuss my analysis of the efficiency of the trigger system, specifically focusing on the drop in efficiency of recording 2-meter-long tracks that we observed.

    

Identification of Cosmic Rays in the ICARUS Experiment Using Precision Timing

After operating for 3-years in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory and receiving significant upgrades at CERN, the ICARUS detector was transported to Fermilab to serve as the Far Detector in the Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) program. The SBN program is composed of three Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers (LArTPCs) with the primary goal of a search for evidence of sterile neutrinos. At Fermilab this detector will operate at shallow depth where it is exposed to a high flux of cosmic rays that can fake neutrino interactions. To mitigate this effect a Cosmic Ray Tagger (CRT) and a 3-meter-thick concrete overburden were installed. Precise timing information from the CRT and an upgraded photomultiplier tube (PMT) subsystems can help to identify whether an interaction originated from inside or outside of the ICARUS cryostat. In this talk I will discuss methods for cosmogenic background reduction and timing calibration of the CRT and PMT subsystems.   

Cosmogenic Background Signal Tagging Efficiency in the ICARUS Experiment Cosmic Ray Tagger

The ICARUS experiment is at the forefront of neutrino physics, poised to address observed neutrino oscillation anomalies as well as to provide further insights into recent measurements such as Neutrino-4, which hint at possible evidence for sterile neutrinos. Critical to these measurements is the ability to remove cosmogenic signals from data which can be mistaken for the electron neutrino appearance signal. The Cosmic Ray Tagger (CRT) will be used to 'tag' these incoming cosmogenic particles, and its efficiency is a crucial factor in understanding the level of this background. In this talk, I will discuss the techniques used to determine the overall CRT tagging efficiency including such factors as geometrical efficiency and the channel-by-channel efficiency of the signal readout electronics.   

Calibrating the ICARUS Detector

Serving as the far detector for the Short-Baseline Neutrino (SBN) Program, the ICARUS-T600 Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detector is located at Fermilab and has collected neutrino data since 2021. In order to make the high-precision measurements necessary to achieve the SBN Program's physics goals, an extensive calibration program has been established for ICARUS. Included in this calibration program are studies of low-level detector effects that can contribute to detector response nonuniformities and temporal variations, as well as high-level analyses making use of "standard candles" (e.g. neutral pions decaying to two photons) to validate particle energy reconstruction. In this talk, the ICARUS calibration program is presented, showing preliminary results using both simulation and first ICARUS data.   

Neutrino Reconstruction at ICARUS with a Machine Learning Framework

The ICARUS T600 LArTPC detector successfully ran for three years at the underground LNGS laboratories, providing a first sensitive search for LSND-like anomalous electron neutrino appearance in the CNGS beam. After a significant overhauling at CERN, the T600 detector has been placed in its experimental hall at Fermilab, fully commissioned, and the first events observed with full detector readout. Regular data taking began in May 2021 with neutrinos from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) and the Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NUMI) off-axis beam. Full reconstruction of neutrino events in first ICARUS data is rapidly making progress. Modern developments in machine learning have allowed for the development of an end-to-end machine learning-based event reconstruction for ICARUS data. This reconstruction folds in 3D voxel-level feature extraction using sparse convolutional neural networks and particle clustering using graph neural networks to produce outputs suitable for physics analyses. This talk will summarize preliminary performance of an end-to-end machine leaning-based event reconstruction on neutrino data at the ICARUS detector.   

Novel Neutral Current Neutrino Energy Estimator and Application to the Sterile NeutrinoSearch at the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN)

Liquid argon time projection chambers, such as those part of the Short-Baseline Neutrino Program

(SBN), provide an unprecedented amount of information about GeV-scale interactions. This wealth

of information motivates a novel method of neutrino energy estimation in neutral current (NC)

interactions using solely the final-state hadronic kinematics. This method has implications in the

search for sterile neutrinos at SBN since it may enable the observation of shape differences in the

NC neutrino energy spectrum. The method and a statistics-only 3+1 NC disappearance sensitivity

were explored at the generator level in previous work (PhysRevD.103.112011). While the results of

this study are promising, they are dependent on the accuracy of the modeling of nuclear effects. By

applying this method to charged current (CC) muon neutrino interactions to predict the outgoing

muon kinematics, the impact of nuclear modeling on the method can be tested against data. In this

talk, I present the method and its application to an NC disappearance search, as well as progress in

testing the method using CC interactions, with MicroBooNE data.