Nuclear corrections in neutrino-nucleus DIS and their compatibility with global NPDF analyses
Abstract
We perform a global chi2-analysis of nuclear parton distribution functions using data from charged current neutrino-nucleus deep-inelastic scattering (DIS), charged-lepton-nucleus DIS, and the Drell-Yan (DY) process. We show that the nuclear corrections in nu-A DIS are not compatible with the predictions derived from l+A DIS and DY data. We quantify this result using a hypothesis-testing criterion based on the chi2 distribution which we apply to the total chi2 as well as to the chi2 of the individual data sets. We find that it is not possible to accommodate the data from nu-A and l+A DIS by an acceptable combined fit. Our result has strong implications for the extraction of both nuclear and proton parton distribution functions using combined neutrino and charged-lepton data sets.