Free nucleons propagating in water are known to produce. rays, which form a background to the searches for diffuse supernova neutrinos and sterile neutrinos carried out with Cherenkov detectors. As a consequence, the process of nucleon knockout induced by neutral-current quasielastic interactions of atmospheric (anti) neutrinos with oxygen needs to be under control at the quantitative level in the background simulations of ongoing and future experiments. In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty associated with the theoretical description of the nuclear cross sections, estimating it from the discrepancies between the predictions of different models
Estimate of the theoretical uncertainty of the cross sections for nucleon knockout in neutral-current neutrino-oxygen interactions
GIUSTI, CARLOTTA;MEUCCI, ANDREA
2015-01-01
Abstract
Free nucleons propagating in water are known to produce. rays, which form a background to the searches for diffuse supernova neutrinos and sterile neutrinos carried out with Cherenkov detectors. As a consequence, the process of nucleon knockout induced by neutral-current quasielastic interactions of atmospheric (anti) neutrinos with oxygen needs to be under control at the quantitative level in the background simulations of ongoing and future experiments. In this paper, we provide a quantitative assessment of the uncertainty associated with the theoretical description of the nuclear cross sections, estimating it from the discrepancies between the predictions of different modelsI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.