Quasi-elastic neutrino charged-current scattering off medium-heavy nuclei: 40Ca and 40Ar

TL;DR

This paper models quasi-elastic neutrino charged-current scattering on calcium and argon nuclei up to 2.8 GeV using a relativistic distorted-wave impulse approximation, comparing with electron scattering data and analyzing nuclear effects.

Contribution

It applies a relativistic model to neutrino scattering on medium-heavy nuclei and compares results with electron scattering data, highlighting nuclear effects and model dependencies.

Findings

Reduced exclusive cross sections are similar for neutrino and electron scattering.

Significant nuclear model dependence of cross sections at around 1 GeV.

Cross sections decrease slowly with increasing nuclear mass number.

Abstract

The charged-current quasi-elastic scattering of muon neutrinos on calcium and argon targets is calculated for neutrino energy up to 2.8 GeV. The calculations are done within the framework of the relativistic distorted-wave impulse approximation, which was earlier successfully applied to describe electron-nucleus data. The model is first tested against experimental data for electron scattering off calcium and then it is applied to calculate (anti)neutrino cross sections on 40Ca and 40Ar. We show that reduced exclusive cross sections for neutrino and electron scattering are similar. A significant nuclear model dependence of both inclusive and total cross sections for energy about 1 GeV was found. From the comparison of the (anti)neutrino differential and total cross sections per (proton)neutron, calculated for the carbon, oxygen, and argon targets it is evident that the cross sections decrease slowly with the mass-number of the target due to nuclear effects.