Consistent analysis of neutral- and charged-current neutrino scattering off carbon

Abstract

Background: Good understanding of the cross sections for (anti)neutrino scattering off nuclear targets in the few-GeV energy region is a prerequisite for correct interpretation of results of ongoing and planned oscillation experiments. Purpose: Clarify possible source of disagreement between recent measurements of the cross sections on carbon. Method: Nuclear effects in (anti)neutrino scattering off carbon nucleus are described using the spectral function approach. The effect of two- and multi-nucleon final states is accounted for by applying an effective value of the axial mass, fixed to 1.23 GeV. Neutral-current elastic (NCE) and charged-current quasielastic (CCQE) processes are treated on equal footing. Results: The differential and total cross sections for the energy ranging from a few hundreds of MeV to 100 GeV are obtained and compared to the available data from the BNL E734, MiniBooNE, and NOMAD experiments. Conclusions: Nuclear effects in NCE and CCQE scattering seem to be very similar. Within the spectral function approach, the axial mass from the shape analysis of the MiniBooNE data is in good agreement with the results reported by the BNL E734 and NOMAD Collaborations. However, the combined analysis of NCE and CCQE data does not seem to support the contribution of multi-nucleon final states being large enough to explain the normalization of the MiniBooNE-reported cross sections.

14 pages, 9 figures, detailed discussion of the role of FSI is added

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• The Challenge of the EMC Effect: existing data and future directions
• Improving the accuracy of neutrino energy reconstruction in charged-current quasielastic scattering off nuclear targets
• Measurement of the ${\nu }_{\mu }$ charged current quasi-elastic cross-section on carbon with the T2K on-axis neutrino beam
• First combined measurement of the muon neutrino and antineutrino charged-current cross section without pions in the final state at T2K
• Measurement of the Ar(e,e${}^{\prime }$ p) and Ti(e,e${}^{\prime }$ p) cross sections in Jefferson Lab Hall A
• Neutral current quasielastic (anti)neutrino scattering beyond the Fermi gas model at MiniBooNE and BNL kinematics
• Implementation and investigation of electron-nucleus scattering in the \textsc{NEUT} neutrino event generator
• Recent Developments in Neutrino/Antineutrino - Nucleus Interactions