Improving the description of dimuon production in neutrino-nucleus collisions using the SACOT-$\chi$ scheme

TL;DR

This paper improves the theoretical modeling of dimuon production in neutrino-nucleus collisions by implementing the SACOT-χ scheme, leading to more accurate predictions that align well with experimental data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a self-contained calculation of neutrino-induced dimuon production using the SACOT-χ scheme, enhancing previous models by incorporating full mass effects at NLO.

Findings

SACOT-χ scheme causes up to 20% modifications in predictions.

Good agreement with NuTeV experimental data.

Effective acceptance correction depends on perturbative order and heavy-quark treatment.

Abstract

Dimuon production in deeply inelastic scattering between neutrinos and nuclei plays an important role in constraining the strange-quark parton distribution functions (PDFs). Here, we present a self-contained calculation of this process consisting of a next-to-leading order semi-inclusive charmed-hadron production in the SACOT-$\chi$ general-mass variable-flavor-number scheme, followed by a semi-leptonic decay of the charmed hadron. We find that invoking the SACOT-$\chi$ scheme introduces modifications up to $20 \, \%$ in comparison to our previous esimates, where only kinematic mass effects were considered through the slow-rescaling variable. We reiterate our earlier observation that the effective acceptance correction - typically used in global PDF fits as a simplifying approximation - depends on the perturbative order, PDFs, scales, and also on the treatment of heavy-quark effects. We find good agreement with the corresponding data from the NuTeV experiment.