Inclusive and diffractive neutrino-nucleus scattering at high energy

Abstract

We calculate the energy dependence of inclusive and diffractive neutrino-nucleus deep-inelastic scattering cross sections within the dipole picture, focusing on the ultra-high-energy regime. We predict an up to $\sim 10\%$ nuclear suppression in the inclusive neutrino-Oxygen scattering originating from the non-linear QCD dynamics in the small-$x$ Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution. Diffraction is found to be a small $1\dots 4\%$ contribution to the total cross section across a wide range of neutrino energies relevant for current and near-future experiments. The diffractive cross section is calculated separately for the coherent and incoherent channels that are found to be of equal importance. Additionally, we include the dominant contribution from the $|q\bar q g\rangle$ Fock state of the $W^\pm$ and $Z$ bosons in the high-$Q^2$ limit, along with the lowest-order $|q\bar q\rangle$ contribution. The $|q\bar{q}g\rangle$ contribution is found to be numerically significant, reaching up to 40\% of the diffractive cross section.