Exploring Nuclear Aspects of Neutrino Interactions in Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

The ability of current and next generation accelerator based neutrino oscillation measurements to reach their desired sensitivity and provide new insight into the nature of our Universe, requires a high-level of understanding of the neutrino-nucleus interactions.

These include precise estimation of the relevant cross sections and the reconstruction of the incident neutrino energy from the measured final state particles.

Incomplete understanding of these interactions can skew the reconstructed neutrino spectrum and thereby bias the extraction of fundamental oscillation parameters and searches for new physics. This proposal exploit the similarity of electron- and neutrino-nucleus interactions.

It leverages wide phase-space exclusive electron scattering data with known beam energies as well as neutrino scattering data in the same energy region and on similar nuclear targets, to test energy reconstruction methods and interaction models.

The ERC NeutrinoNuclei project will deliver well constrained simulation environment and uncertainties of the neutrino-nuclei interaction, to meet the requirements of future high-precision experiments.