1307.1243 (P. Coloma et al.)

Impact of nuclear effects on the extraction of oscillation parameters    [PDF]

P. Coloma, P. Huber

We study the possible impact of nuclear effects and final state interactions on the determination of the oscillation parameters due to mis-reconstruction of non-quasi-elastic events as quasi-elastic events at low energies. We analyze a muon neutrino disappearance experiment using a water Cerenkov detector, such as the T2K experiment. We find that, if completely ignored in the fit, nuclear effects can induce a significant bias in the determination of atmospheric oscillation parameters, particularly for the atmospheric mixing angle. Even after inclusion of a near detector a bias in the determination of the atmospheric mixing angle comparable to the statistical error remains.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1243