Inclusive quasielastic neutrino and antineutrino scattering off nuclei within the Standard Model and beyond

Journal article, 2025

We derive fully general expressions for the inclusive (anti-)neutrino-induced nuclear quasielastic production of a strange or charmed baryon Y, considering all dimension-six new-physics operators relevant to the semileptonic q -* q'l nu l transition with both left- and right-handed neutrino fields. We illustrate the formalism by applying it to the Ac production in neutrino-nucleus scattering. The nuclear response is computed using a state-of-the-art ab initio spectral function, based on realistic nuclear many-body wave functions obtained via the coupled-cluster method and a nuclear Hamiltonian derived from chiral effective field theory. We also highlight the role played by the final state interactions between the produced Y hyperon and the residual nuclear system, which can obscure potential new physics signals in this (anti-)neutrino- nucleus reaction. Our results improve upon previous studies that neglected nuclear corrections and uncertainties-effects we show to be comparable to, or even larger than, those expected from new physics.