A unified approach for nucleon knock-out, coherent and incoherent pion production in neutrino interactions with nuclei

TL;DR

This paper develops a unified nuclear response model for neutrino interactions, covering quasi-elastic, multi-nucleon, and pion production channels, and compares it with experimental data, emphasizing the importance of multi-nucleon contributions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive theoretical framework using RPA for various neutrino-nucleus interaction channels, unifying their description and highlighting the role of collective effects.

Findings

The model successfully describes experimental data on carbon.

Multi-nucleon emission significantly impacts cross-section interpretations.

The approach elucidates the evolution of cross-sections from carbon to calcium.

Abstract

We present a theory of neutrino interactions with nuclei aimed at the description of the partial cross-sections, namely quasi-elastic and multi-nucleon emission, coherent and incoherent single pion production. For this purpose, we use the theory of nuclear responses treated in the random phase approximation, which allows a unified description of these channels. It is particularly suited for the coherent pion production where collective effects are important whereas they are moderate in the other channels. We also study the evolution of the neutrino cross-sections with the mass number from carbon to calcium. We compare our approach to the available neutrino experimental data on carbon. We put a particular emphasis on the multi-nucleon channel, which at present is not easily distinguishable from the quasi-elastic events. This component turns out to be quite relevant for the interpretation of experiments (K2K, MiniBooNE, SciBooNE). It can account in particular for the unexpected behavior of the quasi-elastic cross-section.