Quasielastic charged-current neutrino scattering in the scaling model with relativistic effective mass

TL;DR

This paper presents a scaling model using relativistic effective mass to predict quasielastic neutrino scattering cross sections, effectively incorporating nuclear effects and matching experimental data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a simple scaling model with relativistic effective mass that accurately predicts neutrino scattering cross sections, including nuclear effects beyond impulse approximation.

Findings

Model describes electron scattering data within a quasielastic band.

Predicts neutrino cross sections with comparable accuracy to complex models.

Incorporates nuclear effects like meson-exchange currents and correlations.

Abstract

We use a recent scaling analysis of the quasielastic electron scattering data from $^{12}$C to predict the quasielastic charge-changing neutrino scattering cross sections within an uncertainty band. We use a scaling function extracted from a selection of the $(e,e')$ cross section data, and an effective nucleon mass inspired by the relativistic mean-field model of nuclear matter. The corresponding super-scaling analysis with relativistic effective mass (SuSAM*) describes a large amount of the electron data lying inside a phenomenological quasielastic band. The effective mass incorporates the enhancement of the transverse current produced by the relativistic mean field. The scaling function incorporates nuclear effects beyond the impulse approximation, in particular meson-exchange currents and short range correlations producing tails in the scaling function. Besides its simplicity, this model describes the neutrino data as reasonably well as other more sophisticated nuclear models.