The experimental data from quasielastic electron scattering from $^{12}$C are reanalyzed in terms of a new scaling variable suggested by the interacting relativistic Fermi gas with scalar and vector interactions, which is known to generate a relativi
stic effective mass for the interacting nucleons. By choosing a mean value of this relativistic effective mass $m_N^* =0.8 m_N$, we observe that most of the data fall inside a region around the inverse parabola-shaped universal scaling function of the relativistic Fermi gas. This suggests a method to select the subset of data that highlight the quasielastic region, about two thirds of the total 2,500 data. Regardless of the momentum and energy transfer, this method automatically excludes the data that are not dominated by the quasielastic process. The resulting band of data reflects deviations from the perfect universality, and can be used to characterize experimentally the quasielastic peak, despite the manifest scaling violation. Moreover we show that the spread of the data around the scaling function can be interpreted as genuine fluctuations of the effective mass $M^* equiv m^*_N/m_N sim 0.8 pm 0.1$. Applying the same procedure we transport the scaling quasielastic band into a theoretical prediction band for neutrino scattering cross section that is compatible with the recent measurements and slightly more accurate.
Recent progresses on the relativistic modeling of neutrino-nucleus reactions are presented and the results are compared with high precision experimental data in a wide energy range.
The angular distribution of the phase space arising in two-particle emission reactions induced by electrons and neutrinos is computed in the laboratory (Lab) system by boosting the isotropic distribution in the center of mass (CM) system used in Mont
e Carlo generators. The Lab distribution has a singularity for some angular values, coming from the Jacobian of the angular transformation between CM and Lab systems. We recover the formula we obtained in a previous calculation for the Lab angular distribution. This is in accordance with the Monte Carlo method used to generate two-particle events for neutrino scatteringcite{Sob12}. Inversely, by performing the transformation to the CM system, it can be shown that the phase-space function, which is proportional to the two particle-two hole (2p-2h) hadronic tensor for a constant current operator, can be computed analytically in the frozen nucleon approximation, if Pauli blocking is absent. The results in the CM frame confirm our previous work done using an alternative approach in the Lab frame. The possibilities of using this method to compute the hadronic tensor by a boost to the CM system are analyzed.
Two-particle two-hole contributions to electroweak response functions are computed in a fully relativistic Fermi gas, assuming that the electroweak current matrix elements are independent of the kinematics. We analyze the genuine kinematical and rela
tivistic effects before including a realistic meson-exchange current (MEC) operator. This allows one to study the mathematical properties of the non-trivial seven-dimensional integrals appearing in the calculation and to design an optimal numerical procedure to reduce the computation time. This is required for practical applications to CC neutrino scattering experiments, where an additional integral over the neutrino flux is performed. Finally we examine the viability of this model to compute the electroweak 2p-2h response functions.
We estimate the expected errors of nuclear matrix elements coming from the uncertainty on the NN interaction. We use a coarse grained (GR) interaction fitted to NN scattering data, with several prescriptions for the long-part of the interaction, incl
uding one pion exchange and chiral two-pion exchange interactions.
Two-particle two-hole contributions to electromagnetic response functions are computed in a fully relativistic Fermi gas model. All one-pion exchange diagrams that contribute to the scattering amplitude in perturbation theory are considered, includin
g terms for pionic correlations and meson-exchange currents (MEC). The pionic correlation terms diverge in an infinite system and thus are regularized by modification of the nucleon propagator in the medium to take into account the finite size of the nucleus. The pionic correlation contributions are found to be of the same order of magnitude as the MEC.
We describe a model for pion production off nucleons and coherent pions from nuclei induced by neutrinos in the 1 GeV energy regime. Besides the dominant Delta pole contribution, it takes into account the effect of background terms required by chiral
symmetry. Moreover, the model uses a reduced nucleon-to-Delta resonance axial coupling, which leads to coherent pion production cross sections around a factor two smaller than most of the previous theoretical estimates. Nuclear effects like medium corrections on the Delta propagator and final pion distortion are included.
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.
We review the general interplay between Nuclear Physics and neutrino-nucleus cross sections at intermediate and high energies. The effects of different reaction mechanisms over the neutrino observables are illustrated with examples in calculations using several nuclear models and ingredients.
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 obtai
ned 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.
