Modeling Nuclear Effects for Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering in the Few-GeV Region

Abstract

Accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments rely on the description of neutrino interactions with bound nucleons inside atomic nuclei. Neutrino fluxes used in modern experiments (T2K, NOvA) are peaked in the 0.5–5 GeV energy region where one can identify contributions from multiple interaction channels and various nuclear effects. The neutrino-nucleus cross sections in this region are known with a precision not exceeding 20% and have to be investigated further in pursue to reduce systematic errors in oscillation measurements. The concept of Monte Carlo neutrino event generators, which provide essential cross section expectations for oscillation experiments, is examplified by NuWro, the generator developed at the University of Wroclaw. We discuss various implementations of nuclear effects on top of the factorization framework used to describe neutrino-nucleus scattering, focusing specifically on possible generator development using more sophisticated microscopic models.