Quasi-elastic neutrino charged-current scattering off $^{12}$C: effects of the meson exchange currents and large nucleon axial mass

TL;DR

This paper analyzes quasi-elastic neutrino scattering on carbon, focusing on meson exchange currents and the impact of a large nucleon axial mass, revealing significant differences between models.

Contribution

It evaluates the effects of meson exchange currents and large axial mass on neutrino-carbon scattering within the RDWIA framework.

Findings

Different models produce substantially different $d\sigma/dQ^2$ results.

Meson exchange currents significantly affect electroweak response functions.

Large nucleon axial mass alters the cross section distributions.

Abstract

The quasi-elastic scattering of muon neutrino and electrons on a carbon target are analyzed using the relativistic distorted-wave impulse approximation (RDWIA). We also evaluate the contribution of the two-particle and two-hole meson exchange current ($2p-2h$ MEC) to electroweak response functions. The nuclear model dependence of the (anti)neutrino cross sections is studied within the RDWIA+MEC approach and RDWIA model with the large nucleon axial mass. It is shown that the results for the squared momentum transfer distribution $d\sigma/dQ^2$ and for invariant mass of the final hadronic system distribution $d\sigma/dW$ obtained within these models are substantially different.