Electron versus muon neutrino induced cross sections in charged current quasi-elastic processes

Abstract

Differences between ${\nu }_e$ and ${\nu }_{\mu }$ quasielastic cross sections are essential in neutrino oscillation analyses and CP violation searches for experiments such as DUNE and T2HK. The ratio of these is however poorly known experimentally and for certain kinematic regions theoretical models give contradictory answers. We use two independent mean-field based models to investigate this ratio using ${}^{40}$Ar and ${}^{12}$C targets. We demonstrate that a proper treatment of the final nucleon's wave function confirms the dominance of ${\nu }_{\mu }$ over ${\nu }_e$ induced cross sections at forward lepton scattering.

Comments: Updated Fig. 2, minor changes to text, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Letters