- Open Access
Improving neutrino oscillation measurements through event classification
Phys. Rev. D 113, 076012 – Published 13 April, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zqmw-rvn1
Abstract
Precise neutrino energy reconstruction is essential for next-generation long-baseline oscillation experiments, yet current methods remain limited by large uncertainties in neutrino-nucleus interaction modeling. Even so, it is well established that different interaction channels produce systematically varying amounts of missing energy and therefore yield different reconstruction performance–information that standard calorimetric approaches do not exploit. We introduce a strategy that incorporates this structure by classifying events according to their underlying interaction type prior to energy reconstruction. Using supervised machine-learning techniques trained on labeled generator events, we leverage intrinsic kinematic differences among quasielastic scattering, meson-exchange current, resonance production, and deep-inelastic scattering processes. A cross-generator testing framework demonstrates that this classification approach is robust to microphysics mismodeling and, when applied to a simulated DUNE disappearance analysis, yields improved accuracy and sensitivity at the 10%–20% level. These results highlight a practical path toward reducing reconstruction-driven systematics in future oscillation measurements.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (64)
- B. Abi et al. (DUNE Collaboration), arXiv:2002.03005.
- K. Abe et al. (Hyper-Kamiokande Collaboration), arXiv:1805.04163.
- A. Friedland and S. W. Li, Phys. Rev. D 99, 036009 (2019).
- M. A. Acero et al. (NOvA Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 106, 032004 (2022).
- A. M. Ankowski, P. Coloma, P. Huber, C. Mariani, and E. Vagnoni, Phys. Rev. D 92, 091301 (2015).
- M. Khachatryan et al. (CLAS, e4v Collaboration), Nature (London) 599, 565 (2021).
- N. M. Coyle, S. W. Li, and P. A. N. Machado, Phys. Rev. D 111, 093010 (2025).
- L. Alvarez-Ruso et al. (NuSTEC Collaboration), Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 100, 1 (2018).
- A. S. Kronfeld, D. G. Richards, W. Detmold, R. Gupta, H.-W. Lin, K.-F. Liu, A. S. Meyer, R. Sufian, and S. Syritsyn (USQCD Collaboration), Eur. Phys. J. A 55, 196 (2019).
- L. A. Ruso et al., J. Phys. G 52, 043001 (2025).
- E. D. Bloom and F. J. Gilman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 25, 1140 (1970).
- D. Rein and L. M. Sehgal, Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 133, 79 (1981).
- A. Bodek and U. K. Yang, Nucl. Phys. B, Proc. Suppl. 112, 70 (2002).
- O. Benhar, N. Farina, H. Nakamura, M. Sakuda, and R. Seki, Phys. Rev. D 72, 053005 (2005).
- A. M. Ankowski and J. T. Sobczyk, Phys. Rev. C 74, 054316 (2006).
- D. Drechsel, S. S. Kamalov, and L. Tiator, Eur. Phys. J. A 34, 69 (2007).
- A. Bodek and U.-k. Yang, arXiv:1011.6592.
- H. Kamano, S. X. Nakamura, T. S. H. Lee, and T. Sato, Phys. Rev. C 88, 035209 (2013).
- S. X. Nakamura, H. Kamano, and T. Sato, Phys. Rev. D 92, 074024 (2015).
- M. Kabirnezhad, Phys. Rev. D 97, 013002 (2018).
- K. Xie, J. Gao, T. J. Hobbs, D. R. Stump, and C. P. Yuan, Phys. Rev. D 109, 113001 (2024).
- C. Andreopoulos et al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res., Sect. A 614, 87 (2010).
- Y. Hayato, Acta Phys. Pol. B 40, 2477 (2009), https://www.actaphys.uj.edu.pl/fulltext?series=Reg&vol=40&page=2477.
- O. Buss, T. Gaitanos, K. Gallmeister, H. van Hees, M. Kaskulov, O. Lalakulich, A. B. Larionov, T. Leitner, J. Weil, and U. Mosel, Phys. Rep. 512, 1 (2012).
- T. Golan, J. T. Sobczyk, and J. Zmuda, Nucl. Phys. B, Proc. Suppl. 229–232, 499 (2012).
- K. Gallmeister, U. Mosel, and J. Weil, Phys. Rev. C 94, 035502 (2016).
- J. Isaacson, W. I. Jay, A. Lovato, P. A. N. Machado, and N. Rocco, Phys. Rev. D 107, 033007 (2023).
- S. Yu, in Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society (2019), arXiv:1910.06953.
- J. Liu, J. Ott, J. Collado, B. Jargowsky, W. Wu, J. Bian, and P. Baldi (DUNE Collaboration), arXiv:2012.06181.
- A. Shmakov, A. Yankelevich, J. Bian, and P. Baldi (NOvA Collaboration), arXiv:2303.06201.
- R. Abbasi et al. (IceCube Collaboration), J. Instrum. 21, P02020 (2026).
- P. Baldi, J. Bian, L. Hertel, and L. Li, Phys. Rev. D 99, 012011 (2019).
- M. A. Acero et al. (NOvA Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 98, 032012 (2018).
- L. Vinton, Measurement of muon neutrino disappearance with a NOvA experiment, Ph.D. thesis, Sussex U., 2018.
- C. Andreopoulos, C. Barry, S. Dytman, H. Gallagher, T. Golan, R. Hatcher, G. Perdue, and J. Yarba, arXiv:1510.05494.
- L. Fields, DUNE Fluxes, https://glaucus.crc.nd.edu/DUNEFluxes/.
- J. Nieves, I. Ruiz Simo, and M. J. Vicente Vacas, Phys. Rev. C 83, 045501 (2011).
- C. H. Llewellyn Smith, Phys. Rep. 3, 261 (1972).
- M. Martini, M. Ericson, G. Chanfray, and J. Marteau, Phys. Rev. C 80, 065501 (2009).
- D. Rein and L. M. Sehgal, Nucl. Phys. B223, 29 (1983).
- M. A. Shifman, in 8th International Symposium on Heavy Flavor Physics (World Scientific, Singapore, 2000), Vol. 3, pp. 1447–1494.
- I. I. Y. Bigi and N. Uraltsev, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 16, 5201 (2001).
- W. Melnitchouk, R. Ent, and C. Keppel, Phys. Rep. 406, 127 (2005).
- O. Lalakulich, W. Melnitchouk, and E. A. Paschos, Phys. Rev. C 75, 015202 (2007).
- O. Lalakulich, N. Jachowicz, C. Praet, and J. Ryckebusch, Phys. Rev. C 79, 015206 (2009).
- R. Acciarri et al. (DUNE Collaboration), arXiv:1512.06148.
- A. Friedland and S. W. Li, Phys. Rev. D 102, 096005 (2020).
- R. Acciarri et al. (MicroBooNE Collaboration), J. Instrum. 12, P02017 (2017).
- R. Acciarri et al. (ArgoNeuT Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 99, 012002 (2019).
- B. Bhandari et al. (CAPTAIN Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 042502 (2019).
- W. Castiglioni, W. Foreman, I. Lepetic, B. R. Littlejohn, M. Malaker, and A. Mastbaum, Phys. Rev. D 102, 092010 (2020).
- S. Andringa et al. (ARTIE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. C 108, L011601 (2023).
- S. Martynenko et al. (CAPTAIN Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 107, 072009 (2023).
- P. Abratenko et al. (MicroBooNE Collaboration), Eur. Phys. J. C 84, 1052 (2024).
- P. Abratenko et al. (MicroBooNE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 102, 112013 (2020).
- K. Hornik, M. Stinchcombe, and H. White, Neural Netw. 2, 359 (1989).
- G. E. Hinton, N. Srivastava, A. Krizhevsky, I. Sutskever, and R. R. Salakhutdinov, arXiv:1207.0580.
- F. Pedregosa, G. Varoquaux, A. Gramfort, V. Michel, B. Thirion, O. Grisel, M. Blondel, P. Prettenhofer, R. Weiss, V. Dubourg, J. Vanderplas, A. Passos, D. Cournapeau, M. Brucher, M. Perrot, and E. Duchesnay, J. Mach. Learn. Res. 12, 2825 (2011).
- D. P. Kingma and J. Ba, arXiv:1412.6980.
- K. Abe et al. (T2K Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 108, 072011 (2023).
- P. Abratenko et al. (MicroBooNE Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 105, 112003 (2022).
- N. M. Coyle, S. W. Li, and P. A. N. Machado, J. High Energy Phys. 12 (2022) 166.
- L. Breiman, Mach. Learn. 45, 5 (2001).
- G. Biau and E. Scornet, arXiv:1511.05741.