Strange form factors of the proton: a new analysis of the neutrino (antineutrino) data of the BNL-734 experiment

Abstract

We consider ratios of elastic neutrino(antineutrino)-proton cross sections measured by the Brookhaven BNL-734 experiment and use them to obtain the neutral current (NC) over charged current (CC) neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry. We discuss the sensitivity of these ratios and of the asymmetry to the electric, magnetic and axial strange form factors of the nucleon and to the axial cutoff mass M_A. We show that the effects of the nuclear structure and interactions on the asymmetry and, in general, on ratios of cross sections are negligible. We find some restrictions on the possible values of the parameters characterizing the strange form factors. We show that a precise measurement of the neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry would allow the extraction of the axial and vector magnetic strange form factors in a model independent way. The neutrino-antineutrino asymmetry turns out to be almost independent on the electric strange form factor and on the axial cutoff mass.