Charged kaon production by coherent scattering of neutrinos and antineutrinos on nuclei

TL;DR

This paper investigates the coherent production of charged kaons by neutrinos and antineutrinos on nuclei, using a microscopic approach to better understand neutrino-nucleus interactions relevant to current experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed microscopic model incorporating chiral symmetry and optical potentials to analyze kaon production in neutrino interactions.

Findings

Analyzes angular and momentum distributions of produced kaons.

Studies energy and nuclear dependence of cross sections.

Provides predictions relevant for neutrino experiment analyses.

Abstract

With the aim of achieving a better and more complete understanding of neutrino interactions with nuclear targets, the coherent production of charged kaons induced by neutrinos and antineutrinos is investigated in the energy range of some of the current neutrino experiments. We follow a microscopic approach which, at the nucleon level, incorporates the most important mechanisms allowed by the chiral symmetry breaking pattern of QCD. The distortion of the outgoing (anti)kaon is taken into account by solving the Klein-Gordon equation with realistic optical potentials. Angular and momentum distributions are studied, as well as the energy and nuclear dependence of the total cross section.