Electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering in the impulse approximation regime

Abstract

A quantitative understanding of the weak nuclear response is a prerequisite for the analyses of neutrino experiments such as K2K and MiniBOONE, which measure energy and angle of the muons produced in neutrino-nucleus interactions in the energy range $0.5-3$ GeV and reconstruct the incident neutrino energy to determine neutrino oscillations. In this paper we discuss theoretical calculations of electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering, carried out within the impulse approximation scheme using realistic nuclear spectral functions.Comparison between electron scattering data and the calculated inclusive cross section off oxygen, at beam energies ranging between 700 and 1200 MeV, show that the Fermi gas model, widely used in the analysis of neutrino oscillation experiments,fails to provide a satisfactory description of the measured cross sections,and inclusion of nuclear dynamics is needed.