Neutrino-nucleus cross section in the impulse approximation regime

Abstract

In the impulse approximation regime the nuclear response to a weakly interacting probe can be written in terms of the measured nucleon structure fuctions and the target spectral function, yielding the energy and momentum distribution of the constituent nucleons. We discuss a calculation of charged current neutrino-oxygen interactions in the quasielastic channel, carried out within nuclear many body theory. The proposed approach, extensively and successfully employed in the analysys of electron-nucleus scattering data, allows for a parameter free prediction of the neutrino-nucleus cross section, whose quantitative understanding will be critical to the analysis of the next genaration of high precision neutrino oscillation experiments.