Neutral Current Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering. Theory

TL;DR

This paper reviews theoretical models of neutral-current neutrino-nucleus scattering, focusing on nuclear effects, model comparisons, and the potential to detect strange quark contributions through experimental measurements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current theoretical approaches, challenges, and the role of nuclear effects in neutral-current neutrino scattering within relevant energy ranges.

Findings

Current models show varying predictions for nuclear effects.

Experimental data are limited but crucial for model validation.

Methods to detect strange quark contributions are discussed.

Abstract

The treatment of nuclear effects in neutrino-nucleus interactions is one of the main sources of systematic uncertainty for the analysis and interpretation of data of neutrino oscillation experiments. Neutrinos interact with nuclei via charged or neutral currents and both cases must be studied to obtain a complete information. We give an overview of the theoretical work that has been done to describe nuclear effects in neutral-current neutrin onucleus scattering in the kinematic region ranging between beam energies of a few hundreds MeV to a few GeV, which is typical of most ongoing and future accelerator-based neutrino experiments, and where quasielastic scattering is the main interaction mechanism. We review the current status and challenges of the theoretical models, the role and relevance of the contributions of different nuclear effects, and the present status of the comparison between the numerical predictions of the models as well as the available experimental data. We discuss also the sensitivity to the strange form factors of the nucleon and the methods and observables that can allow one to obtain evidence for a possible strange quark contribution from measurements of neutrino and antineutrino-nucleus scattering.