Neutral current neutrino-nucleus scattering: theory

Abstract

The treatment of nuclear effects in neutrino-nucleus interactions is one of the main sources of systematic uncertainty for the analysis and interpretation of data of neutrino oscillation experiments. Neutrinos interact with nuclei via charged or neutral currents and both cases must be studied to obtain a complete information. We give an overview of the theoretical work that has been done to describe nuclear effects in neutral-current neutrinonucleus scattering in the kinematic region ranging between beam energies of a few hundreds MeV to a few GeV, which is typical of most ongoing and future accelerator-based neutrino experiments, and where quasielastic scattering is the main interaction mechanism. We review the current status and challenges of the theoretical models, the role and relevance of the contributions of different nuclear effects, and the present status of the comparison between the numerical predictions of the models as well as the available experimental data. We discuss also the sensitivity to the strange form factors of the nucleon and the methods and observables that can allow one to obtain evidence for a possible strange quark contribution from measurements of neutrino and antineutrino-nucleus scattering.

Concept of Coherence in Neutrino and Antineutrino Scattering off Nuclei

“…} from which, in view of (anti)neutrino masslessness (i.e., and ), a formula is derived for the differential cross section of the (anti)neutrinonucleus scattering (87) Considering that in the laboratory coordinate system the nucleus is supposed to be at rest and in an internal quantum state before the interaction, for the kinematic variables in (87) we have Then, with (see (52) from Section 4), expression (87) with matrix element (69) takes the form (88) where is given by ( 75), and is the kinetic energy of the scattered nucleus (formulas ( 56)-( 58)). Then, since the kinetic energy of nuclear recoil (see (56) in Section 4) (89) depends on the energy carried away by the neutrino, , integration of the delta function in (224) should be carefully performed in the form (90) Here is the solution of the equation -. For the derivative of the nuclear kinetic energy with respect to the neutrino energy one obtains…”

“…During the preparation of this review new works were published that dealt thoroughly with the nuclear structure in neutrino-nucleus scattering processes [89,90].…”

Nucleon momentum distribution extracted from the experimental scaling function

“…4 we present the ratio of the derivatives which is a part of Eqs. (17) 9 and (26). The behaviour of the ratio at positive y is almost the same for all q-values considered.…”

“…We would like to note that the Green function method (GFM) [e.g. [13][14][15][16], see also [10] and [17]] is appropriate for the consideration of the spectral function in nuclear theory. Many difficulties arising in the case of finite nuclei can be avoided using the GFM in the case of nuclear matter.…”

Influence of single-particle energy on inclusive electron scattering

“…These studies provide an advanced understanding of relativistic heavy-ion collisions [2,9,10] and non-nucleonic degrees of freedom in nuclear physics [11]. In addition, the nuclear structure information obtained from the ( ) ¢ e e , process is of considerable importance in the development of neutrino scattering and neutrino oscillation [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Recently, a series of QE electron scattering experiments have been conducted at Jefferson laboratory, yielding valuable data for analyzing the ratio of SRC pairs in nuclei and nucleon-nucleon interaction at high-momentum [2,4,19].…”