Flavor-dependent radiative corrections in coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

TL;DR

This paper provides precise calculations of coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering cross sections on spin-0 nuclei within the Standard Model, accounting for flavor-dependent radiative corrections and uncertainties, with implications for fundamental physics tests and reactor monitoring.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of neutrino-nucleus scattering cross sections including flavor-dependent radiative effects and detailed uncertainty analysis.

Findings

Radiative corrections break flavor universality due to lepton mass effects.

Predicted cross sections achieve subpercent precision at low energies.

Results are applicable to Standard Model tests, new physics searches, and reactor monitoring.

Abstract

We calculate coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering cross sections on spin-0 nuclei (e.g. $^{40}$Ar and $^{28}$Si) at energies below 100 MeV within the Standard Model and account for all effects of permille size. We provide a complete error budget including uncertainties at nuclear, nucleon, hadronic, and quark levels separately as well as perturbative error. Our calculation starts from the four-fermion effective field theory to explicitly separate heavy-particle mediated corrections (which are absorbed by Wilson coefficients) from light-particle contributions. Electrons and muons running in loops introduce a nontrivial dependence on the momentum transfer due to their relatively light masses. These same loops, and those mediated by tau leptons, break the flavor universality because of mass-dependent electromagnetic radiative corrections. Nuclear physics uncertainties significantly cancel in flavor asymmetries resulting in subpercent relative errors. We find that for low neutrino energies, the cross section can be predicted with a relative precision that is competitive with neutrino-electron scattering. We highlight potentially useful applications of such a precise cross section prediction ranging from precision tests of the Standard Model, to searches for new physics and to the monitoring of nuclear reactors.