Exploring Neutrino Interactions with MicroBooNE

Abstract: Recently, MiniBooNE observed an electromagnetic excess at low energy. What is the nature of this excess? What about the nature of the low-energy excess at LSND 20 years ago? The MicroBooNE detector will see neutrinos from the same Booster beam at Fermilab as used by MiniBooNE. MicroBooNE's design will enable us to discriminate photons from electrons elucidating the MiniBooNE and LSND low-energy electromagnetic excesses. MicroBooNE is a 170 ton liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) capable of imaging neutrino interactions with the detail of a bubble chamber, but with electronic data acquisition and processing. In addition to shining light on the low-energy excesses and measuring low-energy neutrino cross sections, MicroBooNE is leading the way for a more extensive short-baseline neutrino physics program at Fermilab and it also serves as a R&D project towards a long-baseline multi-kiloton scale LArTPC detector.