Extracting the Weinberg angle at intermediate energies

Abstract

A recent experiment by the NuTeV collaboration resulted in a surprisingly high value for the weak mixing angle ${\sin }^2\hat{I}{¸}_W$. The Paschos-Wolfenstein relation, relating neutrino cross sections to the Weinberg angle, is of pivotal importance in the NuTeV analysis. In this work, we investigate the sensitivity of the Paschos-Wolfenstein relation to nuclear structure aspects at neutrino energies in the few GeV range. Neutrino-nucleus cross sections are calculated for ${}^{16}$O and ${}^{56}$Fe target nuclei within a relativistic quasi-elastic nucleon-knockout model.

To appear in the proceedings of International School of Nuclear Physics: 27th Course: "Neutrinos in Cosmology, in Astro, Particle and Nuclear Physics", Erice, Sicily, Italy, 16-24 Sep 2004