Neutrino inclusive inelastic scattering off nuclei

Abstract

We present a detailed description of high-energy neutrino and antineutrino inelastic inclusive scattering off nuclei in terms of nuclear structure functions. In our approach we take into account a QCD description of the nucleon structure functions as well as a number of basic nuclear effects including nuclear shadowing, Fermi motion and binding, nuclear pion excess and off-shell correction to bound nucleon structure functions. These effects prove to be important in the studies of charged-lepton deep-inelastic scattering. We discuss similarities and dissimilarities in the calculation of nuclear effects for charged-lepton and neutrino scattering caused by nonconserved axial current in neutrino scattering. We examine the Adler and the Gross-Llewellyn-Smith sum rules for nuclear structure functions and find a remarkable cancellation between nuclear shadowing and off-shell corrections in these sum rules. We present calculations of differential cross sections for inclusive neutrino and antineutrino scattering in comparison with recent data on different target materials.