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An overview of the significant contributions made by the Aligarh group in the field of neutrino physics has been provided. The group's work began with the study of quasielastic neutrino scattering on deuterium, specifically the process $\nu_\mu + d \rightarrow \mu^- + p +p$, focusing on moderate neutrino energies within the impulse approximation framework in order to analyze the early experiments at ANL and BNL with deuterium filled bubble chambers. These studies were later extended to numerically calculate (anti)neutrino interaction cross sections for the inclusive quasielastic scattering from nuclei using local density approximation~(LDA), incorporating nucleon-nucleon correlations for moderate to heavy nuclear targets. The inelastic scattering cross sections for one pion production and the deep inelastic scattering~(DIS) from nuclei have been obtained using LDA with multi nucleon correlation effects. In the case of single pion production, the final state interaction of the pions with the residual nucleus has also been taken into account. In addition, the group has explored other inelastic processes of kaon and eta meson production, in the (anti)neutrino interactions with the nucleon targets. Furthermore, we have investigated electron and positron scattering off proton targets in the intermediate energy range, focusing on polarization observables and T-noninvariance. Our research has also delved into polarized electron scattering to explore the possibility of observing parity-violating asymmetry (PVA) in elastic and deep inelastic scattering, among other related topics. The group has also contributed to the study of atmospheric neutrino flux in the cosmic ray interactions, relevant for various sites of the neutrino oscillation experiments with atmospheric neutrinos., Comment: 8 pages Submitted to Eur. Phys. J. ST special issue "Radio detection of ultra-high energy neutrino and cosmic ray"

In this work, we study the charged current induced neutrino and antineutrino scattering from the free nucleon target. This study has been performed in the energy range of a few GeV, relevant for the (anti)neutrino oscillation experiments with accelerator and atmospheric neutrinos. For a few GeV neutrino, the contribution to the cross section mainly comes from the quasielastic, the inelastic production of mesons like pion, kaon, eta, and hyperons as well as from the deep inelastic scattering by the weak currents in $\Delta S$=0 and $\Delta S$=1 sectors. The numerical results are presented for the $Q^2$ distribution of the differential cross section for all the aforementioned processes. The effect of the cut on the center of mass energy $W$ has been explicitly discussed., Comment: Submitted to Eur. Phys. J. ST special issue "Radio detection of ultra-high energy neutrino and cosmic ray"; 17 pages, 12 figures, 3 tables

We have studied the deep inelastic scattering of polarized charged leptons from polarized nucleon targets and evaluated the polarized structure functions $g_{1,2}(x,Q^2)$ for protons and neutrons as well as the nucleon asymmetries $A_{1p}(x,Q^2)$ and $A_{2p}(x,Q^2)$ for protons. The higher order perturbative corrections up to the next-to-next-to-the-leading order (NNLO) using the parameterization of LSS05 polarized parton distribution functions in the 3-flavor MSbar scheme and the nonperturbative corrections viz. the twist-3 corrections and target mass corrections (TMC) have been included in the calculations. The numerical results for the polarized nucleon structure functions and the proton asymmetries are presented and compared with the experimental results. The sum rule integrals of the nucleon structure functions corresponding to the Ellis-Jaffe, Bjorken, Gottfried and Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rules have been evaluated numerically and are compared with the experimental results., Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures

The charged current weak production of $\Delta (1232)$ from the free proton target induced by the electron/positron in the intermediate energy range corresponding to the beam energy available at JLab and Mainz, has been studied. The results for the differential scattering cross section $\frac{d\sigma}{dQ^2}$, the angular distribution $\frac{d\sigma}{d\Omega_{\Delta}}$, and the total scattering cross section $\sigma(E_e)$ for both the electron and positron induced processes are presented, for the various energies in the range of 0.5--4~GeV. The cross section $\sigma(E_e)$ is found to be of the order of $10^{-39}$~cm$^{2}$ for the electron/positron energies in the few GeV range. The availability of electron/positron beams having well defined energy and direction with very high luminosity of the order of $10^{38}-10^{39}$~cm$^{-2}$~sec$^{-1}$, makes it possible to observe the weak charged current production of $\Delta(1232)$ and determine the axial vector form factors $C_{i}^{A} (Q^2);~(i=3-5)$. The sensitivity of the differential cross section $\frac{d\sigma}{dQ^2}$ to the subdominant form factors $C_{3}^{A}(Q^2)$ and $C_{4}^{A} (Q^2)$ is found to be strong enough, especially in the low $Q^2$ region, which can be used to determine them phenomenologically and to test the various theoretical models proposed to calculate them., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, and 1 table

Accelerator based neutrino oscillation experiments seek to measure the relative number of electron and muon neutrinos and antineutrinos at different $L/E$ values. However high statistics studies of neutrino interactions are almost exclusively measured using muon neutrinos and antineutrinos since the dominant flavor of neutrinos produced by accelerator based beams are of the muon type. This work reports new measurements of electron neutrino and antineutrino interactions in hydrocarbon, obtained by strongly suppressing backgrounds initiated by muon flavor neutrinos and antineutrinos. Double differential cross sections as a function of visible energy transfer, $E_\text{avail}$, and transverse momentum transfer, $p_T$, or three momentum transfer, $q_3$ are presented., Comment: 25 pages, 32 figures and 7 tables, accepted for publication in Physical Review D. Revised to add content updated in review process

Neutron production in antineutrino interactions can lead to bias in energy reconstruction in neutrino oscillation experiments, but these interactions have rarely been studied. MINERvA previously studied neutron production at an average antineutrino energy of ~3 GeV in 2016 and found deficiencies in leading models. In this paper, the MINERvA 6 GeV average antineutrino energy data set is shown to have similar disagreements. A measurement of the cross section for an antineutrino to produce two or more neutrons and have low visible energy is presented as an experiment-independent way to explore neutron production modeling. This cross section disagrees with several leading models' predictions. Neutron modeling techniques from nuclear physics are used to quantify neutron detection uncertainties on this result., Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures; Added ancillary files with cross section values as .csv Matches preprint accepted by publisher

We have studied neutral and charged current (anti)neutrino induced $\eta$ production off the free nucleon target at MicroBooNE energies, in the light of recent results reported by the MicroBooNE collaboration for the total $\eta$ production cross section. This study has been made using a theoretical model in which the weak hadronic current receives contribution from the nonresonant Born terms as well as from the resonance excitations. The Born terms are obtained using the SU(3) symmetric chiral model, used earlier in the study of $K-$meson production. The contribution from the resonance terms is considered from the excitation of five nucleon resonances viz. $S_{11}(1535)$, $S_{11}(1650)$, $P_{11}(1710)$, $P_{11}(1880)$, and $S_{11}(1895)$. To fix the parameters of the vector current interaction, this model is first used to study the electromagnetic production of $\eta$ mesons induced by real and virtual photons, and the theoretical results have been compared with the data from the MAINZ and JLab experiments. The partially conserved axial-vector current hypothesis and generalized Goldberger-Treiman relation are used to fix the parameters of the axial-vector current interaction. The results are presented for the total cross section for the neutral and charged current induced $\eta$ production, ratio of the cross sections for the charged current to neutral current, MicroBooNE flux averaged cross section $\langle \sigma \rangle$, $\left \langle \frac{d\sigma}{dQ^2} \right\rangle$ and $\left\langle \frac{d\sigma}{dp_\eta} \right\rangle$, which may be useful in the future analysis of MicroBooNE as well as other accelerator and atmospheric neutrino experiments being performed in the ${\cal O}$(1)~GeV energy region., Comment: Physical Review D (in press). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2211.08830

We have studied the tau-lepton polarization in the charged current $\nu_\tau/\bar\nu_\tau$ induced deep inelastic scattering (DIS) from the free nucleon as well as off the nuclear targets that are being used in ongoing and proposed experiments such as IceCube, DUNE, etc. For the free nucleon target, the differential scattering cross sections are obtained by taking into account the non-perturbative effect like target mass corrections (TMC) and the perturbative effect like the evolution of the parton densities at the next-to-leading order (NLO) in the four flavor $\overline{\textrm{MS}}-$scheme. In the case of nucleons bound inside a nuclear target, we have incorporated the nuclear medium effects such as Fermi motion, binding energy and nucleon correlations, through the use of nucleon spectral function. We shall present the results for the differential scattering cross sections and the longitudinal and transverse components of the tau-lepton polarization assuming time reversal invariance., Comment: 20 pages and 11 figures

This paper presents the first simultaneous measurement of the quasielastic-like neutrino-nucleus cross sections on C, water, Fe, Pb and scintillator (hydrocarbon or CH) as a function of longitudinal and transverse muon momentum. The ratio of cross sections per nucleon between Pb and CH is always above unity and has a characteristic shape as a function of transverse muon momentum that evolves slowly as a function of longitudinal muon momentum. The ratio is constant versus longitudinal momentum within uncertainties above a longitudinal momentum of 4.5GeV/c. The cross section ratios to CH for C, water, and Fe remain roughly constant with increasing longitudinal momentum, and the ratios between water or C to CH do not have any significant deviation from unity. Both the overall cross section level and the shape for Pb and Fe as a function of transverse muon momentum are not reproduced by current neutrino event generators. These measurements provide a direct test of nuclear effects in quasielastic-like interactions, which are major contributors to long-baseline neutrino oscillation data samples., Comment: 9 pages, 8 flgures, including supplemental material

We present measurements of the cross section for anti-neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering on hydrocarbon using the medium energy (ME) NuMI wide-band neutrino beam peaking at $\sim 6$ GeV. The cross section measurements are presented as a function of the longitudinal momentum ($p_{||}$) and transverse momentum ($p_{T}$) of the final state muon. This work complements our previously reported high statistics measurement in the neutrino channel and extends the previous anti-neutrino measurement made in the low energy (LE) beam at neutrino energy($$) $\sim$ 3.5 GeV to $p_{T}$ of 2.5 GeV/c. Current theoretical models do not completely describe the data in this previously unexplored high $p_{T}$ region. The single differential cross section as a function of four momentum transfer ($Q^{2}_{QE}$) now extends to 4 GeV$^2$ with high statistics. The cross section as a function of $Q^{2}_{QE}$ shows that the tuned simulations developed by the MINERvA collaboration that agreed well with the low energy beam measurements do not agree as well with the medium energy beam measurements. Newer neutrino interaction models such as the GENIE 3 tunes are better able to simulate the high $Q^{2}_{QE}$., Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures

The charged current (anti)neutrino induced eta production from the nucleons is studied in a model based on the effective Lagrangians to evaluate the contribution from the nonresonant and resonant diagrams. The contribution from the nonresonant background terms has been obtained using a microscopic model based on the SU(3) chiral Lagrangians. The contribution from the resonant diagrams due to the low lying $S_{11}(1535)$, $S_{11} (1650)$, and $P_{11} (1710)$ resonances has been evaluated using an effective phenomenological Lagrangian with its parameters determined from the experimental values of their branching ratios and decay widths to the $N\eta$ channel. The model is first used to reproduce satisfactorily the experimental data from the MAINZ and JLab on the total cross sections for the photo- and electro- production of $\eta$ mesons, which fixes the model parameters in the vector current interaction. The PCAC hypothesis and generalized Goldberger-Treiman relation are used to fix the parameters of the axial vector interaction. The model is then applied to study the weak production of eta mesons induced by the neutrinos and antineutrinos, and predicts the numerical values for the $Q^2$-distribution, $\eta$-momentum distribution, and the total cross section for the reactions $\nu_{\mu} + n \longrightarrow \mu^{-} + p + \eta$ and $\bar{\nu}_{\mu} + p \longrightarrow \mu^+ + n + \eta$ in the energy region up to 2 GeV. It is found that the photo, electro, and (anti)neutrino production of eta mesons is dominated by the contribution from the $S_{11}(1535)$ resonance. The results discussed in this work are relevant for the present and future accelerator experiments like MicroBooNE, T2K, NOvA, MINERvA, T2-HyperK and DUNE as well as for the atmospheric neutrino experiments., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2206.13792

MINERvA has measured the $\nu_{\mu}$-induced coherent $\pi^{+}$ cross section simultaneously in hydrocarbon (CH), graphite (C), iron (Fe) and lead (Pb) targets using neutrinos from 2 to 20 GeV. The measurements exceed the predictions of the Rein-Sehgal and Berger-Sehgal PCAC based models at multi-GeV $\nu_{\mu}$ energies and at produced $\pi^{+}$ energies and angles, $E_{\pi}>1$ GeV and $\theta_{\pi}<10^{\circ}$. Measurements of the cross-section ratios of Fe and Pb relative to CH reveal the effective $A$-scaling to increase from an approximate $A^{1/3}$ scaling at few GeV to an $A^{2/3}$ scaling for $E_{\nu}>10$ GeV., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures and 60 pages of supplemental material. Updated to accepted version, with ancillary files of the cross section data

Neutrino-induced charged-current single $\pi^+$ production in the $\Delta(1232)$ resonance region is of considerable interest to accelerator-based neutrino oscillation experiments. In this work, high statistics differential cross sections are reported for the semi-exclusive reaction $\nu_\mu A \to \mu^- \pi^+ +$ nucleon(s) on scintillator, carbon, water, iron, and lead targets recorded by MINERvA using a wide-band $\nu_\mu$ beam with $\left< E_\nu \right> \approx 6$~GeV. Suppression of the cross section at low $Q^2$ and enhancement of low $T_\pi$ are observed in both light and heavy nuclear targets compared to phenomenological models used in current neutrino interaction generators. The cross-section ratios for iron and lead compared to CH across the kinematic variables probed are 0.8 and 0.5 respectively, a scaling which is also not predicted by current generators., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, 117 pages of supplementary material; updated to accepted version and added ancillary files with cross section data; updated again to add ancillary files with neutrino flux used for result

Processes with precisely known cross sections, like neutrino electron elastic scattering ($\nu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \nu e^{-}$) and inverse muon decay ($\nu_\mu e^{-} \!\rightarrow \mu^{-} \nu_e$) have been used by MINERvA to constrain the uncertainty on the NuMI neutrino beam flux. This work presents a new measurement of neutrino elastic scattering with electrons using the medium energy \numubar enhanced NuMI beam. A sample of 578 events after background subtraction is used in combination with the previous measurement on the \numu beam and the inverse muon decay measurement to reduce the uncertainty on the \numu flux in the \numu-enhanced beam from 7.6\% to 3.3\% and the \numubar flux in the \numubar-enhanced beam from 7.8\% to 4.7\%., Comment: 12 pages, 16 figures

We have presented a review of the properties of neutrinos and their interactions with matter. The different (anti)neutrino processes like the quasielastic scattering, inelastic production of mesons and hyperons, and the deep inelastic scattering from the free nucleons are discussed and the results for the scattering cross sections are presented. The polarization observables for the leptons and hadrons produced in the final state, in the case of quasielastic scattering, are also studied. The importance of nuclear medium effects in the low, intermediate and high energy regions, in the above processes along with the processes of the coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering, coherent meson production, and trident production, have been highlighted. In some cases the results of the cross sections are also given and compared with the available experimental data as well as with the predictions in the different theoretical models. This study would be helpful in understanding the (anti)neutrino interaction cross section with matter in the few GeV energy region relevant to the next generation experiments like DUNE, Hyper-Kamiokande, and other experiments with accelerator and atmospheric neutrinos. We have emphasized the need of better theoretical models for some of these processes for studying the nuclear medium effects in nuclei., Comment: 204 pages, 108 figures; Progress in particle and nuclear physics, Elsevier (in Press)

Maximizing the discovery potential of increasingly precise neutrino experiments will require an improved theoretical understanding of neutrino-nucleus cross sections over a wide range of energies. Low-energy interactions are needed to reconstruct the energies of astrophysical neutrinos from supernovae bursts and search for new physics using increasingly precise measurement of coherent elastic neutrino scattering. Higher-energy interactions involve a variety of reaction mechanisms including quasi-elastic scattering, resonance production, and deep inelastic scattering that must all be included to reliably predict cross sections for energies relevant to DUNE and other accelerator neutrino experiments. This white paper discusses the theoretical status, challenges, required resources, and path forward for achieving precise predictions of neutrino-nucleus scattering and emphasizes the need for a coordinated theoretical effort involved lattice QCD, nuclear effective theories, phenomenological models of the transition region, and event generators., Comment: 81 pages, contribution to Snowmass 2021

Neutrino charged-current quasielastic-like scattering, a reaction category extensively used in neutrino oscillation measurements, probes nuclear effects that govern neutrino-nucleus interactions. This Letter reports the first measurement of the triple-differential cross section for $\nu_{\mu}$ quasielastic-like reactions using the hydrocarbon medium of the MINERvA detector exposed to a wide-band beam spanning 2 $\leq$ E$_\nu \leq$ 20 GeV. The measurement maps the correlations among transverse and longitudinal muon momenta and summed proton kinetic energies, and compares them to predictions from a state-of-art simulation. Discrepancies are observed that likely reflect shortfalls with modeling of pion and nucleon intranuclear scattering and/or spectator nucleon ejection from struck nuclei. The separate determination of leptonic and hadronic variables can inform experimental approaches to neutrino-energy estimation., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary 18 figures

The nuclear medium effects in the nuclear structure functions and differential cross sections in the deep inelastic scattering (DIS) of charged lepton and neutrino from nuclear targets are studied in the region of large $x$ including $x\ge 1$. The nuclear medium effects due to the Fermi motion and the binding energy of nucleons and the nucleon correlations are included using nucleon spectral function calculated in a microscopic field theoretical model. The numerical results for the nuclear structure functions and the cross sections are obtained using the nucleon structure function evaluated at the next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) with the Martin-Motylinski-Harland Lang-Thorne (MMHT) parameterization of the nucleonic parton distribution functions (PDFs) and are compared with the available experimental data on electron scattering from the Jefferson Lab (JLab) and SLAC Nuclear Physics Facility (NPAS). In the case of neutrino scattering the results are relevant for understanding the DIS contributions to the recent inclusive cross sections measured by the Main Injector Neutrino ExpeRiment to study v-A interactions (MINERvA) as well as theoretical predictions are made for Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). The importance of isoscalarity corrections in heavier nuclear targets as well as the effect of the kinematic cut on the CM energy $W$ in defining the DIS region have also been discussed., Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures and 1 table

We compare different neural network architectures for Machine Learning (ML) algorithms designed to identify the neutrino interaction vertex position in the MINERvA detector. The architectures developed and optimized by hand are compared with the architectures developed in an automated way using the package "Multi-node Evolutionary Neural Networks for Deep Learning" (MENNDL), developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The two architectures resulted in a similar performance which suggests that the systematics associated with the optimized network architecture are small. Furthermore, we find that while the domain expert hand-tuned network was the best performer, the differences were negligible and the auto-generated networks performed well. There is always a trade-off between human, and computer resources for network optimization and this work suggests that automated optimization, assuming resources are available, provides a compelling way to save significant expert time.

The theoretical results for the total cross sections and polarization components of the $\tau^{+}$ lepton produced in the charged current induced $|\Delta S| = 1$ quasielastic $\bar\nu_\tau - N$ scattering leading to hyperons ($\Lambda, \Sigma$) have been presented assuming T invariance. The theoretical uncertainties arising due to the use of different vector, axial vector and pseudoscalar form factors as well as the effect of SU(3) symmetry breaking have been studied. We have also presented, for the first time, a comparison of the total cross sections for the production of $e,\mu,\tau$ leptons to facilitate the implications of lepton flavor universality~(LFU) in the $|\Delta S| = 1$ quasielastic reactions induced by the antineutrinos of all flavors i.e., $\nu_{l};~l=e,\mu,\tau$., Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures and 1 table. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2010.10311

The production cross sections and polarization observables of the $\tau$ leptons produced in the $|\Delta S| = 0$ and $1$ induced $\nu_{\tau}(\bar{\nu}_{\tau})-N$ quasielastic scattering have been studied. The effect of T violation, in the case of $\Delta S=0$ and 1 processes, and the SU(3) symmetry breaking effects, in the case of $\Delta S=1$ processes, on the total scattering cross sections as well polarization observables are explored. Experimentally, it would be possible to observe these effects in the forthcoming (anti)neutrino experiments like DUNE, SHiP and DsTau., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, Submission to SciPost. Proceedings contribution to the 16th International Workshop on Tau Lepton Physics

We present a short overview of the importance of the study of "Neutrino Interactions in the Intermediate and High Energy Region", with an introduction to the neutrinos and a very brief description about the collection of invited articles., Comment: 7 pages and 2 figures

The nuclear medium effects are studied in the $\nu_\tau/\bar\nu_\tau$ interactions from nuclei in the deep inelastic scattering (DIS) region and applied to the $^{40}Ar$ nucleus to obtain the scattering cross sections in the energy region of the proposed DUNE experiment. The free nucleon structure functions ($F_{iN}(x,Q^2);~(i=1-5)$) have been calculated at the next-to-leading order (NLO) using Martin-Motylinski-Harland Lang-Thorne 2014 as well as The Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD parameterizations for parton distribution functions (PDFs) and including the effect of perturbative and nonperturbative QCD corrections \cite{Ansari:2020xne}. These free nucleon structure functions are then convoluted with the nucleon spectral function in the nucleus to obtain the nuclear structure functions ($F_{iA}(x,Q^2);~(i=1-5)$). The nucleon spectral function takes into account the Fermi motion and the binding energy of the nucleons as well as the nucleon correlations within the nucleus. These nuclear structure functions are then used to calculate the deep inelastic scattering cross sections. Moreover, the contribution of $\pi$ and $\rho$ mesons as well as the corrections due to the shadowing and antishadowing effects in the relevant kinematic region of the Bjorken variable $x$ are also included. The numerical results for the cross sections have been presented and compared with the results obtained in the phenomenological approach using nuclear structure functions from nCTEQnu., Comment: 26 pages and 20 figures and 1 table

This review demonstrates the unique role of the neutrino by discussing in detail the physics of and with neutrinos. We deal with neutrino sources, neutrino oscillations, absolute masses, interactions, the possible existence of sterile neutrinos, and theoretical implications. In addition, synergies of neutrino physics with other research fields are found, and requirements to continue successful neutrino physics in the future, in terms of technological developments and adequate infrastructures, are stressed., Comment: 227 pages; this review of the field of neutrino physics emerged from a report written by a panel on the request of IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics). The mandate, the panel members and the report can be found on the web page of the panel at ht tps://www.iupapneutrinopanel.org

The present status of the field theoretical model studies of the deep inelastic scattering induced by (anti)neutrino on the nuclear targets in a wide range of Bjorken variable $x$ and four momentum transfer square $Q^2$, has been reviewed~\cite{Haider:2011qs,Haider:2012nf,Haider:2016zrk,Zaidi:2019mfd,Zaidi:2019asc,Ansari:2020xne}. The effect of the nonperturbative corrections such as target mass correction and higher twist effects, perturbative evolution of the parton densities, nuclear medium modifications in the nucleon structure functions, nuclear isoscalarity corrections on the weak nuclear structure functions have been discussed. These structure functions have been used to obtain the differential scattering cross sections. The various nuclear medium effects like the Fermi motion, binding energy, nucleon correlations, mesonic contributions, shadowing and antishadowing corrections relevant in the different regions of $x$ and $Q^2$ have been discussed. The numerical results for the structure functions and the cross sections are compared with some of the available experimental data including the recent results from MINERvA. The predictions are made in argon nuclear target which is planned to be used as a target material in DUNE at the Fermilab., Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2010.05538