Speaker
Description
One of the least constrained contributions to the neutral current (NC) elastic
neutrino-proton cross section is the strange axial form factor, which
represents the strange quark spin contribution to the spin of the proton.
Knowledge of this form factor is important for many areas of physics including
sterile neutrino searches, spin-dependent dark matter searches, and supernova
explosion mechanisms. The strange axial form factor can be determined by
studying NC elastic scattering events in the MicroBooNE detector at low
negative four-momentum transfer squared ($Q^2$). MicroBooNE's unique ability to
detect low-energy protons is expected to allow the measurement of these events
with a $Q^2$ as low as 0.10 GeV$^2$. We present a selection of neutral current
elastic events in a subset of MicroBooNE neutrino data, as well as our plan to
extract the strange axial form factor from this selection in the
full data set.
