A previous model on inclusive charged-current quasi-elastic nuclear reactions is extended to include neutral- and charged-current nucleon emission reactions. The problem of outgoing nucleon propagation is treated by means of a Monte Carlo simulation.
The effects of nuclear re-interactions in the quasi-elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering are investigated with a phenomenological model. We found that the nuclear responses are lowered and their maxima are shifted towards higher excitation energies. This is reflected on the total neutrino-nucleus cross section in a general reduction of about 15% for neutrino energies above 300 MeV.
We make a review of the main nuclear effects that affect neutrino-nucleus cross sections. We discuss how the different models in the literature try to describe these different effects, and thus try to compare between them. We focus on the quasi-elastic reaction in the neutrino energy region of around 1 GeV, where recent data from MiniBoone are available. Among the issues discussed are the different treatment of medium corrections to initial and nal state nucleon wave functions and the problem of the rescattering of ejected nucleons.
The quasi-elastic contribution of the nuclear inclusive electron scattering model developed in A. Gil, J. Nieves, and E. Oset: Nucl. Phys. A 627 (1997) 543; is extended to the study of electroweak Charged Current (CC) induced nuclear reactions at intermediate energies of interest for future neutrino oscillation experiments. The model accounts for long range nuclear (RPA) correlations, Final State Interaction and Coulomb corrections. RPA correlations are shown to play a crucial role in the whole range of neutrino energies, up to 500 MeV, studied in this work. Predictions for inclusive muon capture for different nuclei, and for the reactions $^{12}$C$( u_mu,mu^-)X$ and $^{12}$C$( u_e,e^-)X$ near threshold are also given.
Inclusive quasi-elastic electron scattering off nuclei is investigated at high momentum transfer (Q^2>1 (GeV/c)^2) and x>1 adopting a consistent treatment of nucleon-nucleon correlations in initial and final states. It is shown that in case of light as well as complex nuclei the inclusive cross section at 1.3<x<2 is dominated by the absorption of the virtual photon on a pair of correlated nucleons and by their elastic rescattering in the continuum, whereas at x>2 it is governed by the rescattering of the outgoing off-mass-shell nucleon in the complex optical potential generated by the ground state of the residual (A-1)-nucleon system.
Different approaches to the calculation of neutrino-nucleus cross sections are summarized. Potential impact of improving the nuclear physics input into neutrino interactions and cross section calculations on uncovering new physics is discussed using the example of reactor anomaly. Importance of a thorough understanding of neutrino interactions in astrophysics and cosmology is highlighted.