Calibration of the charge and energy loss per unit length of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber using muons and protons

Author(s): Adams, C; Alrashed, M; An, R; Anthony, J; Asaadi, J; Ashkenazi, A; Balasubramanian, S; Baller, B; Barnes, C; Barr, G; Basque, V; Bass, M; Bay, F; Berkman, S; Bhanderi, A; Bhat, A; Bishai, M; Blake, A; Bolton, T; Camilleri, L; Caratelli, D; Terrazas, I Caro; Carr, R; Fernandez, R Castillo; Cavanna, F; Cerati, G; Chen, Y; Church, E; Cianci, D; Cohen, EO; Conrad, JM; Convery, M; Cooper-Troendle, L; Crespo-Anadon, JI; Tutto, M Del; Devitt, D; Diaz, A; Domine, L; Duffy, K; Dytman, S; Eberly, B; Ereditato, A; Sanchez, L Escudero; Esquivel, J; Evans, JJ; Fitzpatrick, RS; Fleming, BT; Foppiani, N; Franco, D; Furmanski, AP; Garcia-Gamez, D; Gardiner, S; Genty, V; Goeldi, D; Gollapinni, S; Goodwin, O; Gramellini, E; Green, P; Greenlee, H; Grosso, R; Gu, L; Gu, W; Guenette, R; Guzowski, P; Hamilton, P; Hen, O; Hill, C; Horton-Smith, GA; Hourlier, A; Huang, E-C; Itay, R; James, C; de Vries, J Jan; Ji, X; Jiang, L; Jo, JH; Johnson, RA; Joshi, J; Jwa, Y-J; Karagiorgi, G; Ketchum, W; Kirby, B; Kirby, M; Kobilarcik, T; Kreslo, I | Abstract: We describe a method used to calibrate the position- and time-dependent response of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber anode wires to ionization particle energy loss. The method makes use of crossing cosmic-ray muons to partially correct anode wire signals for multiple effects as a function of time and position, including cross-connected TPC wires, space charge effects, electron attachment to impurities, diffusion, and recombination. The overall energy scale is then determined using fully-contained beam-induced muons originating and stopping in the active region of the detector. Using this method, we obtain an absolute energy scale uncertainty of 2\% in data. We use stopping protons to further refine the relation between the measured charge and the energy loss for highly-ionizing particles. This data-driven detector calibration improves both the measurement of total deposited energy and particle identification based on energy loss per unit length as a function of residual range. As an example, the proton selection efficiency is increased by 2\% after detector calibration.