High-energy neutrino deep inelastic scattering cross sections
Keping Xie, Jun Gao, T. J. Hobbs, Daniel R. Stump, C.–P. Yuan
Abstract
We present a state-of-the-art prediction for cross sections of neutrino deep inelastic scattering (DIS) from nucleon at high neutrino energies, <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><a:mrow><a:msub><a:mrow><a:mi>E</a:mi></a:mrow><a:mrow><a:mi>ν</a:mi></a:mrow></a:msub></a:mrow></a:math>, up to 1000 EeV (<c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><c:msup><c:mn>10</c:mn><c:mn>12</c:mn></c:msup><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:mtext> </c:mtext><c:mi>GeV</c:mi></c:math>). Our calculations are based on the latest CT18 NNLO parton distribution functions (PDFs) and their associated uncertainties. To make predictions for the highest energies, we extrapolate the PDFs to small <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><e:mi>x</e:mi></e:math> according to several procedures and assumptions, thus affecting the uncertainties at ultrahigh <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><g:msub><g:mi>E</g:mi><g:mi>ν</g:mi></g:msub></g:math>; we quantify the uncertainties corresponding to these choices. Similarly, we quantify the uncertainties introduced by the nuclear corrections that are required to evaluate neutrino-nuclear cross sections for the neutrino observatories. These results can be applied to currently running astrophysical neutrino observatories, such as IceCube and KM3NeT, as well as various future experiments that have been proposed. Published by the American Physical Society 2024