Inclusive charged-current neutrino-nucleus reactions

Abstract

We present a model for weak charged-current induced nuclear reactions at energies of interest for current and future neutrino oscillation experiments. This model is a natural extension of the work in Refs. [1,2], where the quasielastic contribution to the inclusive electron and neutrino scattering on nuclei was analyzed. The model is based on a systematic many-body expansion of the gauge boson absorption modes that includes one, two, and even three-body mechanisms, as well as the excitation of $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ isobars. The whole scheme has no free parameters, besides those previously adjusted to the weak pion production off the nucleon cross sections in the deuteron, since all nuclear effects were set up in previous studies of photon, electron, and pion interactions with nuclei. We have discussed at length the recent charged-current quasielastic MiniBooNE cross section data, and showed that two-nucleon knockout mechanisms are essential to describing these measurements.