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Boosted decision tree reweighting of simulated neutrino interactions for $O (1) GeV$ neutrino cross-section measurements

Z. Lin ¹, S. Akhter², Z. Ahmad Dar^3,2, N. S. Alex¹, M. Betancourt⁴, S. Boyd^5,6, H. Budd¹, G. Caceres^7,*, G. A. Díaz^4,1 et al. (MINERvA Collaboration)

G. A. Díaz^4,1, J. Felix⁸, L. Fields⁹, A. M. Gago¹⁰, P. K. Gaur², S. M. Gilligan¹¹, R. Gran¹², D. A. Harris^13,4, A. L. Hart¹⁴, J. Kleykamp^1,†, A. Klustová¹⁵, D. Last^1,16, A. Lozano^7,‡, X.-G. Lu^5,17, S. Manly¹, W. A. Mann¹⁸, K. S. McFarland¹, O. Moreno^3,8, J. K. Nelson³, V. Paolone⁶, G. N. Perdue^4,1, C. Pernas³, M. A. Ramírez^16,8, N. Roy¹³, D. Ruterbories¹, H. Schellman¹¹, C. J. Solano Salinas¹⁹, D. S. Correia⁷, M. Sultana¹, N. H. Vaughan¹¹, A. V. Waldron^14,15, B. Yaeggy^20,§, and L. Zazueta^3,∥ (MINERvA Collaboration)

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA
²Department of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh 202002, India
³Department of Physics, William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187, USA
⁴Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, Illinois 60510, USA
⁵Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, United Kingdom
⁶Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA
⁷Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas, Rua Dr. Xavier Sigaud 150, Urca, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 22290-180, Brazil
⁸Campus León y Campus Guanajuato, Universidad de Guanajuato, Lascurain de Retana No. 5, Colonia Centro, Guanajuato 36000, Guanajuato México
⁹Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA
¹⁰Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Apartado 1761, Lima, Perú
¹¹Department of Physics, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA
¹²Department of Physics, University of Minnesota—Duluth, Duluth, Minnesota 55812, USA
¹³York University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3 Canada
¹⁴G O Jones Building, Queen Mary University of London, 327 Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom
¹⁵The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BW, United Kingdom
¹⁶Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA
¹⁷Oxford University, Department of Physics, Oxford, OX1 3PJ, United Kingdom
¹⁸Physics Department, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, USA
¹⁹Facultad de Ciencias Físicas, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, CP 15081, Lima, Perú
²⁰Departamento de Física, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Avenida Espańa 1680 Casilla 110-V, Valparaíso, Chile

^*Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA.
^†Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi 38677, USA.
^‡Present address: Department of Physics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.
^§Present address: Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221, USA.
^∥Present address: Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244, USA.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 012015 – Published 20 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7zty-f2qj

Abstract

This paper illustrates a generic method for multidimensional reweighting of $O (1) GeV$ neutrino interaction Monte Carlo samples. The reweighting is based on a boosted decision tree algorithm trained on high-dimensional space in detector final-state observables. This enables one generator’s events to be reweighted so that its reconstructed particle content and kinematics distributions, as well as detector efficiency, match those of a target model. The approach establishes an efficient way to reuse legacy Monte Carlo data, avoiding regeneration. As an example, we test its use in a measurement of transverse kinematic imbalance of the $μ^{-}$ and proton in charged-current quasielastic like $ν_{μ}$ events from the MINERvA experiment.

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Phys. Rev. D 114, 012015– Published 20 July, 2026

Vol. 114, Iss. 1 — 1 July 2026

Received 8 October 2025
Revised 24 May 2026
Accepted 12 June 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7zty-f2qj

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP³.

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Boosted decision tree reweighting of simulated neutrino interactions for $O (1) GeV$ neutrino cross-section measurements

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Boosted decision tree reweighting of simulated neutrino interactions for O(1) GeV neutrino cross-section measurements

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References (33)

Boosted decision tree reweighting of simulated neutrino interactions for $O (1) GeV$ neutrino cross-section measurements