Paper

Improved muon energy estimation using a detailed model of multiple Coulomb scattering in the MicroBooNE LArTPC

Nguyen, C, Duffy, K, Shaevitz, M H, Asaadi, J, Usher, T, D Garcia Gamez, Wei, H, D Andrade Aldana, X Ji, Yang, T, Moore, C D, Martynenko, S, Mendez, J, Harrison, M, Nguyen, L, Blake, A, Handley, M D, Pate, S F, Djurcic, Z, Diurba, R, Mohayai, T, Moor, A F, Paolone, V, Basque, V, Alves, M G Manuel, Mooney, M, Rosenberg, M, Seligman, W, Bolton, T, Englezos, P, eman, W, Ismail, M S, Johnson, R A, Piasetzky, E, Kalra, D, Pallat, N, Viren, B, L Gu, Tyler, J, Totani, D, Yandel, E, Papavassiliou, V, Balasubramanian, S, Barr, G, Liu, S, Fang, C, Liu, L, W Wu, Qian, X, Wresilo, K, Wang, J, Y -T Tsai, Hen, O, Wang, L, O Benevides Rodrigues, Cross, R, Mahmud, T, Oza, N, G Ge, F Martinez Lopez, Taniuchi, N, Abratenko, P, Berkman, S, Kobilarcik, T, Chappell, A, Convery, M, W Gu, Littlejohn, B R, Hernandez Morquecho, M A, Szelc, A M, Torbunov, D, Bhelande, V, Zhang, Y, Ereditato, A, Nayak, N, Horton-Smith, G A, Cerati, G, Hawkins, S, Zhang, C, Cooper-Troendle, L, Sharankova, R, Franco, D, Gollapinni, S, Thorpe, C, McConkey, N, Schukraft, A, Weber, M, Hilgenberg, C, Wongjirad, T, Greenlee, H, Spitz, J, Zennamo, J, Bateman, J, Trettin, A, Parkinson, H B, White, A J, Green, P, Mellet, L, Mastba

2026

Overview

We present an improved technique for estimating a muon's energy by measuring the deflections along its path inside the MicroBooNE detector from multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS). This approach implements several innovations that better capture detector non-idealizations compared to previous MCS-based muon energy estimators. As a result, it achieves improved resolution, reduced bias, and better data-model agreement. Using model simulation, for fully contained events the estimated bias is within 1% and the estimated resolution varies from 4.3% to 10% as muon energy increases from 0.1 GeV to 2 GeV. For events with particles exiting the detector volume, at least a meter of reconstructed muon track, and a muon energy below 2 GeV, the estimated bias is less than 2% and the estimated resolution varies from 7% to 17% over muon energy. These demonstrate significant improvements over the performance of previous work using an MCS-based energy estimator at MicroBooNE, which achieves twice as large a resolution as well as a bias of 20% over the same energy region. Data-model goodness-of-fit studies are used to validate the estimator's performance on data, showing good agreement within model uncertainties.

• Publisher: Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
• Subject: Bias / Estimation / Goodness of fit / Muons / Scattering / Sensors