Scientists can only detect the presence of a neutrino in the experiment if it interacts with the detector. There are two different ways a neutrino can interact:
“Charged-current”, short CC, interactions: the neutrino converts into its charged lepton partner. So a muon-neutrino will produce a muon particle and an electron-neutrino an electron particle.
“Neutral-current”, short NC, interactions: the neutrino remains a neutrino, but transfers energy to whatever it interacted with (in our case the MicroBooNE detector). These interactions are hard to reveal because there are no muon or electron particles produced that can “tag” the interaction.
