Test of the GENIE neutrino event generator against reduced cross sections extracted from ${}^{16}$O $(e,e'p)$ data

TL;DR

This paper tests the GENIE neutrino event generator against precise electron scattering data on oxygen, revealing discrepancies and highlighting the need for improved nuclear models in neutrino interaction simulations.

Contribution

It demonstrates how electron scattering data can be used to evaluate and improve nuclear models in neutrino event generators like GENIE.

Findings

GENIE models do not accurately reproduce measured reduced cross sections.

Discrepancies are observed across all kinematic regions.

The study offers a method to test and refine nuclear models in neutrino physics.

Abstract

The reduced cross section of the semiexclusive $(l,l'p)$ lepton scat tering process irrespective of the type of interaction is determined mainly by bound nucleon momentum distribution in target and nucleon final state interaction with residual nucleus. These cross sections can be identified with distorted nuclear spectral functions and therefore are similar up to Coulomb c orrections for neutrino and electron scattering on nuclei. In this article we exploit this similarity and use data with precise kinematics and large statistics for semiexclusive electron scattering on oxygen target to test models employed in the GENIE neutrino event generator. We find that these models can not reproduce well the measured reduced cross sections in all allowed kinematic region and the GENIE event generator needs to better describe both the nuclear ground states and nucleon final state interaction. The approach presented in this paper provides a great opportunity to test better the accuracy of nuclear models of quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, employed in neutrino event generators.