Impact of low-energy nuclear excitations on neutrino-nucleus scattering at MiniBooNE and T2K kinematics

Abstract

[Background] Meticulous modeling of neutrino-nucleus interactions is essential to achieve the unprecedented precision goals of present and future accelerator-based neutrino-oscillation experiments. [Purpose] Confront our calculations of charged-current quasielastic cross section with the measurements of MiniBooNE and T2K, and to quantitatively investigate the role of nuclear-structure effects, in particular, low-energy nuclear excitations in forward muon scattering. [Method] The model takes the mean-field (MF) approach as the starting point, and solves Hartree-Fock (HF) equations using a Skyrme (SkE2) nucleon-nucleon interaction. Long-range nuclear correlations are taken into account by means of the continuum random-phase approximation (CRPA) framework. [Results] We present our calculations on flux-folded double differential, and flux-unfolded total cross sections off ${}^{12}$C and compare them with MiniBooNE and (off-axis) T2K measurements. We discuss the importance of low-energy nuclear excitations for the forward bins. [Conclusions] The CRPA predictions describe the gross features of the measured cross sections. They underpredict the data (more in the neutrino than in the antineutrino case) because of the absence of processes beyond pure quasielastic scattering in our model. At very forward muon scattering, low-energy nuclear excitations ($\omega <$ 50 MeV) account for nearly 50% of the flux-folded cross section.

8 pages, 9 figures. Version published in Physical Review C

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Cited by in corpus (17)

• Ab initio study of $({\mathbf{\nu }}_{\mathbf{\ell }},{\mathbf{\ell }}^{-})$ and $({\overline{\mathbf{\nu }}}_{\mathbf{\ell }},{\mathbf{\ell }}^{+})$ inclusive scattering in ${}^{12}$C: confronting the MiniBooNE and T2K CCQE data
• Neutrino energy reconstruction from semi-inclusive samples
• Modeling quasielastic interactions of monoenergetic kaon decay-at-rest neutrinos
• Meson-exchange currents and superscaling analysis with relativistic effective mass of quasielastic electron scattering from ${}^{12}$C
• Semi-inclusive charged-current neutrino-nucleus cross sections in the relativistic plane wave impulse approximation
• Semiempirical formula for electroweak response functions in the two-nucleon emission channel in neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Theoretical tools for neutrino scattering: interplay between lattice QCD, EFTs, nuclear physics, phenomenology, and neutrino event generators
• Recent Progress in Low Energy Neutrino Scattering Physics and Its Implications for the Standard and Beyond the Standard Model Physics
• Extraction of the Coulomb Sum Rule, Transverse Enhancement, and Longitudinal Quenching from an Analysis of all Available e-${}^{12}$C and e-${}^{16}$O Cross Section Data
• Cross sections for coherent elastic and inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• The SuSAv2 model for inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Summary of Workshop on Common Neutrino Event Generator Tools
• Contribution of Nuclear Excitation Electromagnetic Form Factors in ${}^{12}\mathrm{C}$ and ${}^{16}\mathrm{O}$ to the Coulomb Sum Rule
• Neutrino-Nucleus scattering in the SuSA model
• Simulating low-energy neutrino interactions with MARLEY
• A New Generation of Neutrino Cross Section Experiments: Challenges and Opportunities
• Nuclear medium effects in neutrino- and antineutrino-nucleus scattering