Relativistic effects in quasielastic electron scattering

The impact of pionic correlations and meson-exchange currents on the quasi-elastic electromagnetic response functions is studied in a fully relativistic framework.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of "The Nuclear Many Body Problem 2001", NATO Science Series II - Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, Kluwer Academic Publisher

Relativistic Effects in Electroweak Nuclear Responses

The electroweak response functions for inclusive electron scattering are calculated in the Relativistic Fermi Gas model, both in the quasi-elastic and in the $\Delta$ peak regions. The impact of relativistic kinematics at high momentum transfer is investigated through an expansion in the initial nucleonic momentum, which is however exact in the four-momentum of the exchanged boson. The same expansion is applied to the meson exchange currents in the particle-hole sector: it is shown that the non-relativistic currents can be corrected by simple kinematical factors to account for relativity. The left-right asymmetry measured via polarized electron scattering is finally evaluated in the quasi-elastic and $\Delta$ peaks.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, to appear in "Proceedings of the VIII Convegno su Problemi di Fisica Nucleare Teorica, 18-20 October 2000", World Scientifi

Nuclear effects in neutrino-nucleus interactions

An accurate description of the nuclear response functions for neutrino scattering in the Gev region is essential for the interpretation of present and future neutrino oscillation experiments. Due to the close similarity of electromagnetic and weak scattering processes, we will review the status of the scaling approach and of relativistic modeling for the inclusive electron scattering response functions in the quasielastic and $\Delta$-resonance regions. In particular, recent studies have been focused on scaling violations and the degree to which these imply modifications of existing predictions for neutrino reactions. We will discuss sources and magnitude of such violations, emphasizing similarities and differences between electron and neutrino reactions.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Proceeding of the XVIII International School on Nuclear Physics, Neutron Physics and Applications, September 21 - 27, 2009 Varna, Bulgari

Nuclear effects in charged-current quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

After a short review of the recent developments in studies of neutrino-nucleus interactions, the predictions for double-differential and integrated charged current-induced quasielastic cross sections are presented within two different relativistic approaches: one is the so-called SuSA method, based on the superscaling behavior exhibited by electron scattering data; the other is a microscopic model based on relativistic mean field theory, and incorporating final-state interactions. The role played by the meson-exchange currents in the two-particle two-hole sector is explored and the results are compared with the recent MiniBooNE data.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of "XIII Convegno di Cortona su Problemi di Fisica Nucleare Teorica", Cortona (Italy), April 6-8, 201

Superscaling in electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering

The superscaling properties of electron scattering data are used to extract model-independent predictions for neutrino-nucleus cross sections.Comment: Contibution to NuInt05, 4th international workshop on neutrino-nucleus interaction in the few GeV region, Sept. 26 - 29 2005, Okayama, Japa

Estimate of the theoretical uncertainty of the cross sections for nucleon knockout in neutral-current neutrino-oxygen interactions

Free nucleons propagating in water are known to produce gamma rays, which form a background to the searches for diffuse supernova neutrinos and sterile neutrinos carried out with Cherenkov detectors. As a consequence, the process of nucleon knockout induced by neutral-current quasielastic interactions of atmospheric (anti)neutrinos with oxygen needs to be under control at the quantitative level in the background simulations of the ongoing and future experiments. In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty associated with the theoretical description of the nuclear cross sections, estimating it from the discrepancies between the predictions of different models.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Nuclear effects in electron reactions and their impact on neutrino processes

We suggest that superscaling in electroweak interactions with nuclei, namely the observation that the reduced electron-nucleus cross sections are to a large degree independent of the momentum transfer and of the nuclear species, can be used as a tool to obtain precise predictions for neutrino-nucleus cross sections in both charged and neutral current-induced processes.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, proceedings of NUINT09, 6th International Workshop of Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the Few-Gev Region, Sitges (Spain), May 18-22, 200