Hadron production in the charged current semi-inclusive deeply inelastic scattering of $N=Z$ nuclei

TL;DR

This paper calculates neutrino and anti-neutrino scattering on N=Z nuclei to explore how hadron production can reveal nuclear parton distribution functions, highlighting the dominance of chiral-even terms and the impact of sea quarks.

Contribution

It introduces a method using yield asymmetry of produced hadrons to determine nuclear parton distribution functions in charged current deep inelastic scattering.

Findings

Only chiral-even terms contribute to the cross section.

Yield asymmetry is target-independent for N=Z nuclei.

Sea quark and disfavored fragmentation functions significantly affect measurable quantities.

Abstract

The charged current weak interaction can distinguish quark flavors, it provides a valid method to determine (transverse momentum dependent) parton distribution functions in high energy reactions by utilizing tagged hadrons. In this paper, we calculate the charged current semi-inclusive deeply inelastic neutrino and anti-neutrino scattering of $N=Z$ nuclei. Semi-inclusive means that a spin-1 hadron is also measured in addition to the scattered charged lepton. The target nucleus has the same number of neutrons and protons and is assumed as unpolarized. According to calculations, we find that only chiral-even terms survive and chiral-odd terms vanish in the differential cross section for this charged current deeply inelastic (anti-)neutrino nucleus scattering process. Furthermore, we introduce a measurable quantity, the yield asymmetry of the produced hadron $A^h$, to determine the nuclear parton distribution functions. Numerical estimates show that the yield asymmetry is independent of the type of target nucleus if it has the same number of neutrons and protons. Numerical estimates also show that sea quark distribution functions and disfavored fragmentation functions have significant influence on measurable quantities.