The present study is focused on the superscaling behavior of electron-nucleus cross sections in the region lying above the quasielastic peak, especially the region dominated by electroexcitation of the Delta. Non-quasielastic cross sections are obtained from all available high-quality data for Carbon 12 by subtracting effective quasielastic cross sections based on the superscaling hypothesis. These residuals are then compared with results obtained within a scaling-based extension of the relativistic Fermi gas model, including an investigation of violations of scaling of the first kind in the region above the quasielastic peak. A way potentially to isolate effects related to meson-exchange currents by subtracting both impulsive quasielastic and impulsive inelastic contributions from the experimental cross sections is also presented.
We illustrate the connection between electron and neutrino scattering off nuclei and show how the former process can be used to constrain the description of the latter. After reviewing some of the nuclear models commonly used to study lepton-nucleus reactions, we describe in detail the SuSAv2 model and show how its predictions compare with the available electron- and neutrino-scattering data over the kinematical range going from the quasi-elastic peak to pion-production and highly inelastic scattering.
We compare the predictions of the SuperScaling model for charged current quasielastic muonic neutrino and antineutrino scattering from $^{12}$C with experimental data spanning an energy range up to 100 GeV. We discuss the sensitivity of the results to different parametrizations of the nucleon vector and axial-vector form factors. Finally, we show the differences between electron and muon (anti-)neutrino cross sections relevant for the $ u$STORM facility.
We present a model for electron- and neutrino-scattering off nucleons and nuclei focussing on the quasielastic and resonance region. The lepton-nucleon reaction is described within a relativistic formalism that includes, besides quasielastic scattering, the excitation of 13 N* and Delta resonances and a non-resonant single-pion background. Recent electron-scattering data is used for the state-of-the-art parametrizations of the vector form factors; the axial couplings are determined via PCAC and, in the case of the Delta resonance, the axial form factor is refitted using neutrino-scattering data. Scattering off nuclei is treated within the GiBUU framework that takes into account various nuclear effects: the local density approximation for the nuclear ground state, mean-field potentials and in-medium spectral functions. Results for inclusive scattering off Oxygen are presented and, in the case of electron-induced reactions, compared to experimental data and other models.
The axial form factor plays a crucial role in quasielastic neutrino-nucleus scattering, but the error of the theoretical cross section due to uncertainties of $G_A$ remains to be established. Reversely, the extraction of $G_A$ from the neutrino nucleus cross section suffers from large systematic errors due to nuclear model dependencies, while the use of single parameter dipole fits underestimates the errors and prevents an identification of the relevant kinematics for this determination. We propose to use a generalized axial-vector-meson-dominance (AVMD) in conjunction with large-$N_c$ and high energy QCD constrains to model the nucleon axial form factor, as well as the half width rule as an a priori uncertainty estimate. The minimal hadronic ansatz comprises the sum of two monopoles corresponding to the lightest axial-vector mesons being coupled to the axial current. The parameters of the resulting axial form factor are the masses and widths of the two axial mesons as obtained from the averaged PDG values. By applying the half width rule in a Monte Carlo simulation, a distribution of theoretical predictions can then be generated for the neutrino-nucleus quasielastic cross section. We test the model by applying it to the $( u_mu,mu)$ quasielastic cross section from $^{12}$C for the kinematics of the MiniBooNE experiment. The resulting predictions have no free parameters. We find that the relativistic Fermi gas model globally reproduces the experimental data, giving $chi^2/ # bins = 0.81$. A $Q^2$-dependent error analysis of the neutrino data shows that the uncertainties in the axial form factor $G_A(Q^2)$ are comparable to the ones induced by the a priori half width rule. We identify the most sensitive region to be in the range $0.2 lesssim Q^2 lesssim 0.6 ,{rm GeV}^2$.