Neutrino-nucleus cross section within the extended factorization scheme

TL;DR

This paper extends the factorization scheme to weak interactions, enabling accurate calculations of neutrino-nucleus cross sections crucial for neutrino experiments, with results showing moderate model dependence and consistency across reaction mechanisms.

Contribution

The authors generalize the factorization scheme to include weak currents and demonstrate its effectiveness in calculating neutrino-nucleus cross sections.

Findings

Moderate dependence on spectral function models.

Consistent treatment of all reaction mechanisms.

Applicable to accelerator-based neutrino experiments.

Abstract

The factorization scheme, based on the impulse approximation and the spectral function formalism, has been recently generalized to allow the description of electromagnetic nuclear interactions driven by two-nucleon currents. We have extended this framework to the case of weak charged and neutral currents and carried out calculations of the double-differential neutrino-carbon and neutrino-oxygen cross sections using two different models of the target spectral functions. The results, showing a moderate dependence on the input spectral function, confirm that our approach provides a consistent treatment of all reaction mechanisms contributing to the signals detected by accelerator-based neutrino experiments.