Muzamil A Teli

Qudsia Gani

Shamsul H Thoker

Waseem Bari

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Quasi-elastic Neutrino-nucleus Interactions
Qudsia Gani,∗ Waseem Bari, Muzamil A. Teli, and Shamsul H. Thoker
Department of Physics, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, 190 006, India
Introduction
Study of the neutrino interactions is one of
the most exciting recent developments in par-
ticle physics. With the discovery of neutrino
oscillations, first proposed by Pontecorvo
[1], the current neutrino experiments [2] are
aiming to make precise measurements of the
oscillation parameters. Neutrino oscillations
is a quantum mechanical phenomenon which
arises since the mass eigenstates (ν1, ν2, ν3)
and the flavor eigenstates of neutrinos
(νe, νµ, ντ ) are not identical, due to which
there is a flip in their flavor or mass-mixing
as these travel large distances. Improving our
understanding of neutrino-nucleus interaction
cross-sections is crucial to these precision
studies of neutrino oscillations. Interactions
in the neutrino energy region around 1 GeV
are particularly important because of the
expected oscillation signal in this energy
region in many experiments [3], however,
the cross-sections in this region are not very
well known. The data analysis needs to
consider a large number of nuclear effects
that distort the signals and produce new
sources of background that are absent in the
elementary neutrino-nucleon processes. In
this context, it is clearly of interest to have a
theoretically well founded and unified frame-
work in which the electroweak interactions
with nuclei could be systematically studied.
Furthermore, the recent measurements of the
cross-sections for several channels [4] provide
a serious benchmark to the theoretical models.
Results
In this study, we have investigated the var-
ious types of neutrino interactions by looking
∗Electronic address: qudsiagani6@gmail.com
for muon neutrino interactions with oxygen.
Choosing Oxygen as the target is because of
its abundance in the atmosphere. The muon
neutrinos have also been chosen for being the
most abundant amongst the three flavors of
neutrinos. The study has been carried out at
the energy of around 1 to 2 GeV. We have
used the Wroclaw Neutrino event generator,
NuWro [5], for simulating the events. This
event generator is simple, basic, elaborate and
full featured and handles almost all the im-
portant processes in neutrino-nucleus interac-
tions. In the present study, the cross-sections
for 10,000 such events for all the three pro-
cesses enabled by NuWro i.e., resonance ex-
cited scattering (RES), deep inelastic scat-
tering (DIS) and quasi-elastic (QE) scatter-
ing each through charged-current (CC) in-
teractions has been obtained and the corre-
sponding plots are showing the average cross-
section per neutrino interaction event for dif-
ferent processes. In this energy region of 1 to 2
GeV, the main reaction mechanisms are quasi-
elastic scattering, resonance excited scattering
and single pion production through delta ex-
citation [6].
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2
Neutrino Energy(GeV)
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
C
ro
ss
 S
ec
ti
o
n
1
0
-3
9
x
cm
2
(
)
FIG. 1: Quasi-Elastic Charged Current.
The results are much in confirmation with
Proceedings of the DAE-BRNS Symp. on Nucl. Phys. 60 (2015) 888
Available online at www.sympnp.org/proceedings
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
Neutrino Energy(GeV)
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
C
ro
ss
 S
ec
ti
o
n
1
0
-3
9
x
cm
2
(
)
FIG. 2: Resonance Excited Scattering Charged
Current.
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2
Neutrino Energy(GeV)
0
0.3
0.6
0.9
1.2
1.5
1.8
C
ro
ss
 S
ec
ti
o
n
1
0
-3
9
x
cm
2
(
)
FIG. 3: Deep Inelastic Scattering Charged Cur-
rent.
the previously established results [7]. One well
established fact is that, of the three interac-
tion channels, QE-CC has the largest cross-
section and hence one can consistently de-
scribe some experimental data. Moreover, the
very fact that the predicted cross-sections for
QE scattering are very similar for most mod-
els [8], these processes have been abundantly
studied. However, more sophisticated treat-
ment of the nuclear effects is also necessary to
get a detailed agreement with data. For ex-
ample, the theoretical results are clearly be-
low the data published by MiniBooNE [9].
The discrepancy is large enough to provoke
much debate and theoretical attention. This
suggests that much of the experimental cross-
section can be attributed to processes that are
not properly QE, stressing the need of a uni-
fied framework dealing with all relevant mech-
anisms, namely pion production and multi-
nucleon excitation. A pion production prin-
cipal interaction appears to be quasi-elastic
if the pion is absorbed in the final state in-
teractions. Depending on cuts, this effect is
thought to account for about 10 to 20 per-
cent [10] of quasi-elastic events. Moreover,
as the hadrons propagate through nucleus be-
fore these can be detected, the interactions of
produced pions in the nucleus leads to pions
being absorbed or re-scattered, thus reducing
the cross-section. Overall, the impact of nu-
clear effects on observables is considerably sig-
nificant and there are uncertainties associated
with any approach.
References
[1] B.Pontecorvo, Sov.Phys. JETP 6, 429
(1958).
[2] MINERVA collaboration Phys.Rev.Lett
111, 022502 (2013).
[3] MiniBooNE-Collaboration, Phys.Rev.
D81:013005 (2010)
[4] Y. Nakajima et al., Phys. Rev. D 83,
012005 (2011).
[5] C. Juszczak, J.A. Nowak, J.T.Sobczyk,
Nucl.Phys. B Proc. Suppl 159, 211(2006)
[6] K. S. Kuzmin, V. V. Lyubushkin, and V. A.
Naumov, Phys. Atom.Nucl. 69, 1857 (2006).
[7] Riazuddin, Physical Review 114, 1184
(1959)
[8] J. A. Nowak, Phys. Scr. T127, 70 (2006).
[9] A. A. Aguilar-Arevalo et al., Phys. Rev. D
81, 013005 (2010)
[10] T. Leitner, Phys. Rev. C 81, 064614
(2010).
Proceedings of the DAE-BRNS Symp. on Nucl. Phys. 60 (2015) 889
Available online at www.sympnp.org/proceedings


Quasi-elastic Neutrino-nucleus Interactions

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Quasi-elastic Neutrino-nucleus Interactions

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