Theoretical modeling of charged current $\nu_\mu(\bar\nu_\mu)-^{40}Ar$ DIS at DUNE energies

TL;DR

This paper develops a detailed theoretical model for charged current muon neutrino and antineutrino deep inelastic scattering on argon nuclei, incorporating nuclear effects and modern parton distribution functions to predict cross sections relevant for DUNE.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive microscopic framework that combines nuclear medium effects with NNLO PDFs and target mass corrections for accurate DIS cross section predictions on argon.

Findings

Calculated nuclear structure functions $F_{iA}$ using spectral functions and PDFs.

Provided differential cross sections at 4 and 6 GeV energies for DUNE relevance.

Incorporated mesonic contributions and shadowing effects in the model.

Abstract

The charged current $\nu_\mu(\bar{\nu}_\mu)$-induced deep inelastic scattering (DIS) from an $^{40}\mathrm{Ar}$ target is studied using a microscopic framework that incorporates nuclear medium effects due to Fermi motion, binding energy, nucleon correlations, mesonic ($\pi$ and $\rho$) contributions, and nuclear shadowing and antishadowing across the relevant Bjorken-$x$ region. The nuclear structure functions $F_{iA}(x,Q^2)$ $(i=1\text{-}3)$ are evaluated using a relativistic nucleon spectral function ($S_h$) within the local density approximation employing the free nucleon structure functions, $F_{iN}(x,Q^2)$ $(i=1\text{-}3)$. These $F_{iN}(x,Q^2)$ $(i=1\text{-}3)$ are calculated using parton distribution functions (PDFs) from MMHT 2014 parameterization, including higher-order perturbative QCD corrections up to next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO), along with nonperturbative target mass corrections (TMC). The resulting nuclear structure functions $F_{iA}(x,Q^2)$ $(i=1\text{-}3)$ are subsequently used to compute the differential DIS cross sections for $^{40}Ar$ nucleus. Numerical results are presented for $\nu_\mu(\bar\nu_\mu)$ beam energies $E=4$ GeV and $E=6$ GeV for the differential scattering cross sections $\frac{d^2\sigma}{dx dy}$ and $\frac{d\sigma}{dx}$, relevant to ongoing and upcoming liquid-argon neutrino experiments such as DUNE and the Fermilab Short-Baseline Neutrino program.