Study of the reconstruction of $\nu_\mu$ CC QE events from the Booster Neutrino Beam with the ICARUS detector

Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LArTPC) detectors offer charged particle imaging capabilities with impressive spatial resolution. Precise event reconstruction procedures are mandatory to fully exploit the potential of this technology. The Short Baseline Neutrino program (SBN) makes use of this novel technology to carry out sensitive searches for new physics of neutrinos at the GeV energy scale. ICARUS is the far detector of the program, located at 600 m from the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) target and operating at a shallow depth. Recent results from the Neutrino-4 experiment at a Russian nuclear reactor have claimed a $\Bar{\nu}_e$ oscillation signature at short baseline, thus the early phase of ICARUS is intended to test the Neutrino-4 oscillation hypothesis by studying the $\nu_\mu$ disappearance channel with the BNB beam. In this thesis a validation of the ICARUS detector and reconstruction algorithms performance is presented along with a proposed automatic selection to identify simple event topologies towards a final BNB $\nu_\mu$ disappearance analysis. Visual selected neutrinos were initially used to assess the reconstruction performance and demonstrate ICARUS' capability to carry out precise calorimetric studies, particle identification and complete kinematic reconstruction of $\nu_\mu$ CC quasi-elastic interactions. With the additional input of simulated events, the automatic selection procedure to identify neutrino interactions with exactly two particles in the final state, one muon and one proton (1$\mu$1p), was developed and optimized. A detailed evaluation of the proposed selection is presented indicating that a distorted $\nu_\mu$ survival probability should be visible in the presence of sterile neutrinos. A final data-simulation comparison with a limited statistics dataset is presented showing promising results towards a final analysis with full statistics and systematic uncertainties.