Neutrino Energy Reconstruction and the Shape of the CCQE-like Total Cross Section

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that multinucleon effects distort neutrino energy reconstruction and flux unfolding in CCQE-like events, affecting the interpretation of experimental cross section data.

Contribution

It reveals that current energy reconstruction algorithms are inadequate for CCQE-like events due to multinucleon effects, causing shape distortions in unfolded cross sections.

Findings

Multinucleon mechanisms cause significant energy reconstruction distortions.

Unfolded cross sections are artificially shaped by ignoring multinucleon effects.

Shape distortions can mimic experimental data without actual model discrepancies.

Abstract

We show that because of the multinucleon mechanism effects, the algorithm used to reconstruct the neutrino energy is not adequate when dealing with quasielastic-like events, and a distortion of the total flux unfolded cross section shape is produced. This amounts to a redistribution of strength from high to low energies, which gives rise to a sizable excess (deficit) of low (high) energy neutrinos. This distortion of the shape leads to a good description of the MiniBooNE unfolded CCQE-like cross sections published in Phys.Rev. D81 (2010) 092005. However, these changes in the shape are artifacts of the unfolding process that ignores multinucleon mechanisms.