Electron versus Muon Neutrino Induced Cross Sections in Charged Current Quasielastic Processes

Differences between ν_{e} and ν_{μ} 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 ν_{μ} over ν_{e} induced cross sections at forward lepton scattering.

Reconstructing supernova-neutrino spectra using low-energy beta beams

Neutrinos are the principal messengers reaching us from the center of a supernova. Terrestrial neutrino telescopes can provide precious information about the processes in the core of the star. But the information that a neutrino detector can supply is restricted by the fact that little experimental data on the neutrino-nucleus cross sections exist and by the uncertainties in theoretical calculations. In this Letter, we propose a novel procedure that determines the response of a target nucleus in a supernova-neutrino detector, by using low-energy beta beams. We show that fitting "synthetic" spectra, constructed by taking linear combinations of beta-beam spectra, to the original supernova-neutrino spectra reproduces the folded differential cross sections very accurately. Comparing the response in a detector to these synthetic responses provides a direct way to determine the main parameters of the supernova-neutrino energy distribution.

Identifying neutrinos and antineutrinos in neutral-current scattering reactions

We study neutrino-induced nucleon knockout from nuclei. Expressions for the induced polarization are derived within the framework of the independent-nucleon model and the nonrelativistic plane-wave approximation. Large dissimilarities in the nucleon polarization asymmetries are observed between neutrino- and antineutrino-induced processes. These asymmetries represent a potential way to distinguish between neutrinos and antineutrinos in neutral-current neutrino scattering on nuclei. We discuss astrophysical applications of these polarization asymmetries. Our findings are illustrated for neutrino scattering on 16O and 208P b.