# NuFact 2022: The 23rd International Workshop on Neutrinos from Accelerators

July 30, 2022 to August 6, 2022
Cliff Lodge
US/Mountain timezone

## Muon antineutrino charged-current neutral pion production differential cross-section measurement in the NOvA near detector

Aug 5, 2022, 5:10 PM
20m
Wasatch B

### Wasatch B

Talk WG2: Neutrino Scattering Physics

### Speaker

Fan Gao (University of Pittsburgh)

### Description

NOvA is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment primarily designed to measure the muon (anti)neutrino disappearance and electron (anti)neutrino appearance in the off-axis Fermilab NuMI beam. It uses two functionally identical liquid scintillator detectors separated by 810 km and a narrow band beam centered around 2 GeV. Energetic neutral pions produced in $\Delta$ resonance, deep-inelastic interactions or final state interactions are a significant background to the electron (anti)neutrino appearance measurement as the photons coming from neutral pion decay may be misidentified as electrons(positrons). The high statistics antineutrino mode data in the near detector can be used to perform a measurement of the differential cross section for the muon antineutrino charged-current neutral pion production. The analysis uses a convolutional neural network trained on individually simulated particles to identify neutral pions in the final state. A data-driven template fit approach is used to constrain backgrounds. The assessment of systematic uncertainties is also presented.

Attendance type In-person presentation

### Primary author

Fan Gao (University of Pittsburgh)