Helicity asymmetries in neutrino-nucleus interactions

Abstract

We investigate the helicity properties of the ejectile in quasi-elastic neutrino-induced nucleon-knockout reactions and consider the 12C target as a test case. A formalism based on a relativistic mean-field model is adopted. The influence of final-state interactions is evaluated within a relativistic multiple-scattering Glauber approximation (RMSGA) model. Our calculations reveal that the helicity asymmetries A_l in A(\overlineν,\overlineν'N) processes are extremely sensitive to strange-quark contributions to the weak vector form-factors. Thereby, nuclear corrections, such as final-state interactions and off-shell ambiguities in the electroweak current operators, are observed to be of marginal importance. This facilitates extracting strange-quark information from the helicity asymmetry A_l.

14 pages, 6 figures, 1 table submitted to PLB