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1. First Simultaneous Measurement of Differential Muon-Neutrino Charged-Current Cross Sections on Argon for Final States with and without Protons Using MicroBooNE Data

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.041801  

   Abratenko, P ; Alterkait, O ; Andrade_Aldana, D ; Arellano, L ; Asaadi, J ; Ashkenazi, A ; Balasubramanian, S ; Baller, B ; Barr, G ; Barrow, D ; et al ( July 2024 , Physical Review Letters)

   We report the first double-differential neutrino-argon cross section measurement made simultaneously for final states with and without protons for the inclusive muon neutrino charged-current interaction channel. The proton kinematics of this channel are further explored with a differential cross section measurement as a function of the leading proton’s kinetic energy that extends across the detection threshold. These measurements use data collected with the MicroBooNE detector from$6.4\times {10}^{20}$protons on target from the Fermilab booster neutrino beam with a mean neutrino energy of$\sim 0.8\mathrm{GeV}$. Extensive data-driven model validation utilizing the conditional constraint formalism is employed. This motivates enlarging the uncertainties with an empirical reweighting approach to minimize the possibility of extracting biased cross section results. The extracted nominal flux-averaged cross sections are compared to widely used event generator predictions revealing severe mismodeling of final states without protons for muon neutrino charged-current interactions, possibly from insufficient treatment of final state interactions. These measurements provide a wealth of new information useful for improving event generators which will enhance the sensitivity of precision measurements in neutrino experiments.

   Published by the American Physical Society2024 

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2. Nonresonant central exclusive production of charged-hadron pairs in proton-proton collisions at s=13  TeV

   https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.109.112013  

   Hayrapetyan, A ; Tumasyan, A ; Adam, W ; Andrejkovic, J W ; Bergauer, T ; Chatterjee, S ; Damanakis, K ; Dragicevic, M ; Hussain, P S ; Jeitler, M ; et al ( June 2024 , Physical Review D)

   The central exclusive production of charged-hadron pairs in$pp$collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV is examined, based on data collected in a special high-${\beta }^{*}$run of the LHC. The nonresonant continuum processes are studied with the invariant mass of the centrally produced two-pion system in the resonance-free region,$m_{{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}}<0.7$or$m_{{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}}>1.8\mathrm{GeV}$. Differential cross sections as functions of the azimuthal angle between the surviving protons, squared exchanged four-momenta, and$m_{{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}}$are measured in a wide region of scattered proton transverse momenta, between 0.2 and 0.8 GeV, and for pion rapidities$|y|<2$. A rich structure of interactions related to double-pomeron exchange is observed. A parabolic minimum in the distribution of the two-proton azimuthal angle is observed for the first time. It can be interpreted as an effect of additional pomeron exchanges between the protons from the interference between the bare and the rescattered amplitudes. After model tuning, various physical quantities are determined that are related to the pomeron cross section, proton-pomeron and meson-pomeron form factors, pomeron trajectory and intercept, and coefficients of diffractive eigenstates of the proton.