Effect of Outgoing Nucleon Wave Function on Reconstructed Neutrino Energy

Abstract

The main goal of accelerator-based neutrino experiments is the determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters, The oscillation probability depends on the ratio of the distance traveled by the neutrino to its energy, therefore the determination of the distribution of neutrino energies in a detector is crucial. The reconstructed neutrino energy is a kinematic variable which is determined by the energy and scattering angle of the final state lepton in charged current (CC) scattering off an atomic nucleus. The distribution of reconstructed energies around the true incoming energy depends on the nuclear model used to describe the ν-nucleus cross section. We show the effect of distortion of the outgoing nucleon wave function on these distributions.In a detector one observes the CC scattering of a neutrino off a nucleus where a single final-state lepton, with energy E l and scattering angle cos θ l , is detected. In the experimental analysis the reconstructed energy E ν (E l , cos θ l ) is the energy of the neutrino scattering of a neutron at rest, corrected for binding [1,2]. After binning the data in terms of E ν , the true energy distribution has to be recovered. This requires a nuclear model for the interaction. In the experimental analysis a relativistic Fermi gas (RFG) model is commonly used for this task.