Impact of nuclear effects on the determination of the nucleon axial mass

Abstract

We analize the influence of nuclear effects on the determination of the nucleon axial mass from nuclear cross sections. Our work is based on a formalism widely applied to describe electron-nucleus scattering data in the impulse approximation regime. The results of numerical calculations show that correlation effects, not taken into account by the relativistic Fermi gas model, sizably affect the $Q^2$-dependence of the cross section. However, their inclusion does not appear to explain the large values of the axial mass recently reported by the K2K and MiniBooNE collaborations.