Study of final-state interactions of protons in neutrino-nucleus scattering with INCL and NuWro cascade models

Abstract

The modeling of neutrino-nucleus interactions constitutes a challenging source of systematic uncertainty for the extraction of precise values of neutrino oscillation parameters in long-baseline accelerator neutrino experiments. To improve such modeling and minimize the corresponding uncertainties, a new generation of detectors is being developed, which aim to measure the complete final state of particles resulting from neutrino interactions. In order to fully benefit from the improved detector capabilities, precise simulations of the nuclear effects on the final-state nucleons are needed. This article presents the study of the in-medium propagation of knocked-out protons, i.e., final-state interactions (FSI), comparing the NuWro and INCL cascade models. The INCL model is used here for the first time to predict exclusive final states of neutrino interactions. This study of INCL in the framework of neutrino interactions features various novelties, including the production of nuclear clusters (e.g., deuterons, $\alpha$ particles) in the final state. The paper includes a complete characterization of the final state after FSI, comparisons to available measurements of single transverse variables, and an assessment of the observability of nuclear clusters.

19 pages, 19 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• ACHILLES: A novel event generator for electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering
• Final state interactions in semi-inclusive neutrino-nucleus scattering: Application to T2K and MINER$\nu$A experiments
• Inclusive cross section measurements in final states with and without protons for charged-current ${\nu }_{\mu }$-Ar scattering in MicroBooNE
• Parametrized uncertainties in the spectral function model of neutrino charged-current quasielastic interactions for oscillation analyses
• Final-state interactions in neutrino-induced proton knockout from argon in MicroBooNE
• Measurement of neutron production in atmospheric neutrino interactions at Super-Kamiokande
• Longitudinal kinematic imbalances in neutrino and antineutrino interactions for improved measurements of neutrino energy and the axial vector form factor
• Data-driven model validation for neutrino-nucleus cross section measurements
• Deep-learning-based decomposition of overlapping-sparse images: application at the vertex of neutrino interactions
• Contrastive Learning for Robust Representations of Neutrino Data