Improving the accuracy of neutrino energy reconstruction in charged-current quasielastic scattering off nuclear targets

Abstract

We report the results of a theoretical study of quasielastic electron and neutrino interactions with carbon. Our approach takes into account the effects of final-state interactions between the struck nucleon and the residual nucleus, neglected in the impulse approximation, through a generalization of the spectral function formalism. The calculated electron-scattering cross sections turn out to be in very good agreement with the available data over a broad kinematical region. The impact of nuclear effects on the reconstruction of neutrino energy in charged-current quasielastic processes is also studied, and the results of our approach are compared to the predictions of the relativistic Fermi gas model, routinely employed in most Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the existing procedure for energy reconstruction and propose a new, improved, one. At energy ~600 MeV, we observe a sizable difference between neutrino and antineutrino scattering, important for the measurements of charge-parity symmetry violation. Our analysis suggests that a reliable determination of neutrino energy can only be obtained from models validated by a systematic comparison to the available electron-scattering data.PHYSICAL REVIEW D 91, 033005 (2015) U-Uv + iUw, originally proposed in the context of (e ,e ') processes by Horikawa et al. [38]. Within this picture, the real part of the potential, Uv , determines a modification of the energy spectrum of the final-state nucleon, while the imaginary part, Uw, moving strength 033005-2

Charged-current quasielastic scattering of muon antineutrino and neutrino in the MINERvA experiment

“…It is noteworthy that a remarkable agreement with a large body of experimental 12 6 C(e, e ′ ) data [10,[19][20][21][22][23][24] has been observed in Ref. [9].…”

“…The role of FSI on electron and neutrino cross sections in the SF formalism has been studied in detail by the authors of Ref. [9] for the carbon nucleus. In the approach of Ref.…”

“…In the approach of Ref. [9], the target's ground-state properties are described using the hole SF [11], consistently accounting for * ankowski@vt.edu both the the shell structure [12,13] and nucleon-nucleon correlations [14]. To include the effect of Pauli blocking, the particle SF calculated following Ref.…”

Superscaling analysis of quasielastic electron scattering with relativistic effective mass

“…The recent neutrino experiments with accelerators have emphasized the importance of a global precise description of lepton scattering from nuclei at intermediate energies [1][2][3][4][5]. Although a great deal of progress has been achieved with models based on first principles description of the nuclear system [6], alternative approaches based on the spectral function [7,8] or the shell model [9], to mention some recent studies, have been put forward. As a general rule, the models cannot provide yet a complete description of the whole set of (e, e ′ ) data at the full range of kinematics needed, specially for high momentum and energy transfers, where a relativistic description becomes mandatory [10,11].…”

Electron and Muon production cross-sections in quasielastic ν(ν̄)-Nucleus scattering for Eν < 1GeV

“…Firstly, the observation of charged lepton in the final state is the cleanest signature of a (anti)neutrino interaction and secondly this is the simplest process using which energies of the incoming (anti)neutrinos may be determined. However, there are theoretical uncertainties involved while inferring the energy of neutrinos even from CCQE processes on nuclear targets and this has been discussed in detail recently by many authors [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”