Cross sections for coherent elastic and inelastic neutrino-nucleus scattering

Understand

The prospects of extracting new physics signals in coherent elastic neutrino--nucleus scattering (CE$\nu$NS) processes are limited by the precision with which the underlying nuclear structure physics, embedded in the weak nuclear form factor, is known.

• We present calculations of charge and weak nuclear form factors and CE$\nu$NS cross sections on $^{12}$C, $^{16}$O, $^{40}$Ar, $^{56}$Fe and $^{208}$Pb nuclei.
• We obtain the proton and neutron densities, and charge and weak form factors by solving Hartree--Fock (HF) equations with a Skyrme (SkE2) nuclear potential.
• We validate our approach by comparing $^{208}$Pb and $^{40}$Ar charge form factor predictions with available elastic electron scattering data.