Nuclear effects in neutral current quasi-elastic neutrino interactions

Understand

The interpretation of the charged (CCQE) and neutral (NCE) current quasi elastic events collected by the MiniBooNE collaboration involves a number of unresolved issues.

• While it has been suggested that the data can be explained in terms of an effective nucleon axial mass, $M_A$, the results of our theoretical calculations suggest that the CCQE and NCE samples cannot be described by the same value of $M_A$.
• We argue that the disagreement between theory and data may arise from the uncertainties associated with the flux average procedure.
• We also analyze the role of the strange quark in NCE interactions and find that, due to a cancellation between proton and neutron contributions, it turns out to be negligible.