Weak Kaon Production off the Nucleon

TL;DR

This paper models weak kaon production off nucleons induced by neutrinos at low to intermediate energies, providing cross section estimates relevant for neutrino oscillation and proton decay experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a microscopical model based on SU(3) chiral Lagrangians to predict kaon production cross sections in neutrino interactions.

Findings

Cross sections are sizable and measurable by experiments like Minerva and T2K.

Main production mechanisms are identified for neutrino energies up to 1.5 GeV.

Model parameters are derived from semileptonic decay data.

Abstract

The weak kaon production off the nucleon induced by neutrinos is studied at the low and intermediate energies of interest for some ongoing and future neutrino oscillation experiments. This process is also potentially important for the analysis of proton decay experiments. We develop a microscopical model based on the SU(3) chiral Lagrangians. The basic parameters of the model are fpi, the pion decay constant, Cabibbo's angle, the proton and neutron magnetic moments and the axial vector coupling constants for the baryons octet, D and F, that are obtained from the analysis of the semileptonic decays of neutron and hyperons. The studied mechanisms are the main source of kaon production for neutrino energies up to 1.2 to 1.5 GeV for the various channels and the cross sections are large enough to be amenable to be measured by experiments such as Minerva and T2K.