Direct extraction of nuclear effects in quasielastic scattering on carbon

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel experimental technique to directly measure nuclear effects in neutrino quasielastic scattering on carbon, providing data crucial for improving theoretical models and neutrino oscillation analyses.

Contribution

The study presents a new method comparing neutrino and antineutrino scattering on hydrocarbons to extract nuclear effects, addressing a key data gap in neutrino physics.

Findings

Extracted cross section ratio of antineutrino elastic to quasielastic reactions.

Compared experimental results with theoretical models.

Provided insights into nuclear effects on neutrino interactions.

Abstract

Nuclear effects on neutrino reactions are expected to be a significant complication in current and future neutrino oscillation experiments seeking precision measurements of neutrino flavor transitions. Calculations of these nuclear effects are hampered by a lack of experimental data comparing neutrino reactions on free nucleons to neutrino reactions on nuclei. We present results from a novel technique that compares neutrino and antineutrino charged current quasielastic scattering on hydrocarbons to extract a cross section ratio of antineutrino charged current elastic reactions on free protons to charged current quasielastic reactions on the protons bound in a carbon nucleus. This measurement of nuclear effects is compared to models.