QED radiative corrections for accelerator neutrinos

Oleksandr Tomalak; Qing Chen; Richard J Hill; Kevin S McFarland

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32974-x

QED radiative corrections for accelerator neutrinos

Nat Commun. 2022 Sep 8;13(1):5286. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32974-x.

Authors

Oleksandr Tomalak^{1

2

3}, Qing Chen^{4

5

6}, Richard J Hill^{4

7}, Kevin S McFarland⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA. tomalak@lanl.gov.
² Theoretical Physics Department, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, 60510, USA. tomalak@lanl.gov.
³ Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, 87545, USA. tomalak@lanl.gov.
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506, USA.
⁵ Interdisciplinary Center for Theoretical Study, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
⁶ Peng Huanwu Center for Fundamental Theory, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China.
⁷ Theoretical Physics Department, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, 60510, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, 14627, USA.

Abstract

Neutrino oscillation experiments at accelerator energies aim to establish charge-parity violation in the neutrino sector by measuring the energy-dependent rate of ν_e appearance and ν_μ disappearance in a ν_μ beam. These experiments can precisely measure ν_μ cross sections at near detectors, but ν_e cross sections are poorly constrained and require theoretical inputs. In particular, quantum electrodynamics radiative corrections are different for electrons and muons. These corrections are proportional to the small quantum electrodynamics coupling α ≈ 1/137; however, the large separation of scales between the neutrino energy and the proton mass (~GeV), and the electron mass and soft-photon detection thresholds (~MeV) introduces large logarithms in the perturbative expansion. The resulting flavor differences exceed the percent-level experimental precision and depend on nonperturbative hadronic structure. We establish a factorization theorem for exclusive charged-current (anti)neutrino scattering cross sections representing them as a product of two factors. The first factor is flavor universal; it depends on hadronic and nuclear structure and can be constrained by high-statistics ν_μ data. The second factor is non-universal and contains logarithmic enhancements, but can be calculated exactly in perturbation theory. For charged-current elastic scattering, we demonstrate the cancellation of uncertainties in the predicted ratio of ν_e and ν_μ cross sections. We point out the potential impact of non-collinear energetic photons and the distortion of the visible lepton spectra, and provide precise predictions for inclusive observables.